"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye."
— Miss Piggy

"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
— Douglas Adams (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe)

"I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don't know the answer"
— Douglas Adams

"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban)

"This is where you can find your soul if you dare. Where you can touch that part of you that you've never dared look at before. Do not come here and ask me to show you how to draw a face. Ask me to help you find the wind."
— Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak)

"You have to know what you stand for, not just what you stand against. "
— Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak)

"I have survived. I am here. Confused, screwed up, but here. So, how can I find my way? Is there a chain saw of the soul, an ax I can take to my memories or gears?"
— Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak)

"When people don't express themselves, they die one piece at a time."
— Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak)

"According to some, heroic deaths are admirable things. I've never been convinced by this argument, mainly because, no matter how cool, stylish, composed, unflappable, manly, or defiant you are, at the end of the day you're also dead. Which is a little too permanent for my liking."
— Jonathan Stroud (Ptolemy's Gate)

"Check out that one at the end. He's taken the form of a footstool. Weird...but somehow I like his style."

"That is a footstool."
— Jonathan Stroud (The Golem's Eye)

"It seemed weird calling a teenager 'sir' but I'd learned to be careful with immortals. They tended to get offended easily. Then, they blew stuff up."
— Rick Riordan

"Ever had a flying burrito hit you? Well, it's a deadly projectile, right up there with cannonballs and grenades."
— Rick Riordan (The Titan's Curse)

"Grover was sniffing the wind, looking nervous. He fished out his acorns and threw them into the sand, then played his pipes. They rearranged themselves in a pattern that made no sense to me, but Grover looked concerned.

"That's us," he said. "Those five nuts right there."

"Which one is me?" I asked.

"The little deformed one," Zoe suggested.

"Oh, shut up." "
— Rick Riordan (The Titan's Curse)

"The cafe windows wrapped all the way around the observation floor, which gave us a beautiful panoramic view of the skeleton army that had come to kill us."
— Rick Riordan (The Titan's Curse)

"Families are mess. Immortal families are eternally messy. Sometimes the best we can do is to remind each other that we're related, for better or worse...and try to keep the maiming and killing to a minimum."
— Rick Riordan

"I am a badass, and I recognize that you, too, are a badass"
— Cassandra Clare (City of Bones)

"If you were half as funny as you think you are, you'd be twice as funny as you are now."
— Cassandra Clare (City of Bones)

""Is this the part where you start tearing off strips of your shirt to bind my wounds?"

"If you wanted me to rip my clothes off, you should have just asked.""
— Cassandra Clare (City of Bones)

"The door flew open. Jocelyn gave a little scream.
"Jesus!" Luke exclaimed.
"Actually, it's just me," said Simon. "Although I've been told the resemblence is startling." "
— Cassandra Clare (City of Bones)

" "You Might want to lie down," Magnus advised. "I find that it helps when the crushing sense of horrible realization sets in.""
— Cassandra Clare (City of Ashes)

"Don't sulk. For someone with all the grace and coordination of a pregnant wildebeest, you did great."
— Cassandra Clare

"How do I know you'll keep your word?" asked Coraline.
"I swear it," said the other mother. "I swear it on my own mother's grave."
"Does she have a grave?" asked Coraline.
"Oh yes," said the other mother. "I put her in there myself. And when I found her trying to crawl out, I put her back."
— Neil Gaiman (Coraline)

"'What's your name,' Coraline asked the cat. 'Look, I'm Coraline. Okay?'
'Cats don't have names,' it said.
'No?' said Coraline.
'No,' said the cat. 'Now you people have names. That's because you don't know who you are. We know who we are, so we don't need names.'"
— Neil Gaiman (Coraline)

"'Because,' she said, 'when you're scared but you still do it anyway, that's brave.'"
— Neil Gaiman (Coraline)

"If you were me, then I'd be you, and if I were you, then I'd hide somewhere far away."
— Eoin Colfer (Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code)

"Listen to me, goblin. You're stupid, let's accept that and move on."
— Eoin Colfer (Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code)

"Here's what I think, Mr. Wind-Up Bird," said May Kasahara. "Everybody's born with some different thing at the core of their existence. And that thing, whatever it is, becomes like a heat source that runs each person from the inside. I have one too, of course. Like everybody else. But sometimes it gets out of hand. It swells or shrinks inside me, and it shakes me up. What I'd really like to do is find a way to communicate that feeling to another person. But I can't seem to do it. They just don't get it. Of course, the problem could be that I'm not explaining it very well, but I think it's because they're not listening very well. They pretend to be listening, but they're not, really. So I get worked up sometimes, and I do some crazy things."
— Haruki Murakami (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle)

"In a place far away from anyone or anywhere, I drifted off for a moment."
— Haruki Murakami (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle)

"Is it possible, in the final analysis, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another?
We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end, how close can we come to that person's essence? We convince ourselves that we know the other person well, but do we really know anything important about anyone?"
— Haruki Murakami (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle)

"It’s like when you put instant rice pudding mix in a bowl in the microwave and push the button, and you take the cover off when it rings, and there you’ve got ricing pudding. I mean, what happens in between the time when you push the switch and when the microwave rings? You can’t tell what’s going on under the cover. Maybe the instant rice pudding first turns into macaroni gratin in the darkness when nobody’s looking and only then turns back into rice pudding. We think it’s only natural to get rice pudding after we put rice pudding mix in the microwave and the bell rings, but to me, that is just a presumption. I would be kind of relieved if, every once in a while, after you put rice pudding mix in the microwave and it rang and you opened the top, you got macaroni gratin. I suppose I’d be shocked, of course, but I don’t know, I think I’d be kind of relieved too. Or at least I think I wouldn’t be so upset, because that would feel, in some ways, a whole lot more real."
— Haruki Murakami (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle)

"The law presides over things of this world, finally. The world where shadow is shadow and light is light, yin is yin and yang is yang, I'm me and he's him. 'I am me and / He is him/ Autumn eve.' But you don't belong to that world, sonny. The world you belong to is above that or below that."

"Which is better?" I asked, out of simple curiosity. "Above or below?"

"It's not that either one is better," he said. After a brief coughing fit, he spat a glob of phlegm onto a tissue and studied it closely before crumpling the tissue and throwing it into a wastebasket. "It's not a question of better or worse. The point is, not to resist the flow. You go up when you're supposed to go up and down when you're supposed to go down. When you're supposed to go up, find the highest tower and climb to the top. When you're supposed to go down, find the deepest well and go down to the bottom. When there is no flow, stay still. If you resist the flow, everything dries up. If everything dries up, the world is darkness. 'I am he and/ He is me:/ Spring nightfall.' Abandon the self, and there you are."
— Haruki Murakami (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle)

"If, through some kind of reincarnation, it were possible to be reborn as Ushikawa's clothing, with a guarantee of rare glory in the next rebirth, I would still not want to do it."
— Haruki Murakami (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle)

"Of course, they're not clowning around trying to make me laugh. They're doing their best to live very serious lives, and they just happen to fall down sometimes. I think that's cool."
— Haruki Murakami (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle)

"Memories are what warm you up from the inside. But they're also what tear you apart."
— Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)

"If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking."
— Haruki Murakami

"Don't feel sorry for yourself. Only assholes do that."
— Haruki Murakami (Norwegian Wood)

"She waited for the train to pass. Then she said, "I sometimes think that people’s hearts are like deep wells. Nobody knows what’s at the bottom. All you can do is imagine by what comes floating to the surface every once in a while."
— Haruki Murakami (Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman)

"Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional."
— Haruki Murakami

"Everything just blows me away."
— Haruki Murakami (Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman)

"Whatever it is you're seeking won't come in the form you're expecting."
— Haruki Murakami

"Everyone may be ordinary, but they're not normal."
— Haruki Murakami (Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World)

"Not just beautiful, though--the stars are like the trees in the forest, alive and breathing. And they're watching me."
— Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)

"...I have this strange feeling that I'm not myself anymore. It's hard to put into words, but I guess it's like I was fast asleep, and someone came, disassembled me, and hurriedly put me back together again. That sort of feeling."
— Haruki Murakami (Sputnik Sweetheart)

"Not that we were incompatible: we just had nothing to talk about."
— Haruki Murakami (Norwegian Wood)

"Whenever I meet people for the first time, I get them to talk for ten minutes. Then I size them up from the exact opposite perspective of all they’ve told me. Do you think that’s crazy?
“No,” I said, shaking my head, “I’d guess your method works quite well."
— Haruki Murakami (A Wild Sheep Chase)

"They can keep their heaven. When I die, I’d sooner go to Middle Earth. "
— George R.R. Martin

"Even the Inquisitor's eyebrows shot up when Magnus strode through the gate. The High Warlock was wearing black leather pants, a belt with a buckle in the shape of a jeweled M, and a cobalt-blue Prussian military jacket open over a white lace shirt. He shimmered with layers of glitter. His gaze rested for a moment on Alec's face with amusement and a hint of something else before moving on to Jace, prone on the ground.
"Is he dead?" he inquired. "He looks dead."
"No," snapped Maryse. "He's not dead."
"Have you checked? I could kick him if you want." Magnus moved toward Jace.
"Stop that!" the Inquisitor snapped, sounding like Clary's third-grade teacher demanding that she stop doodling on her desk with a marker."
— Cassandra Clare (City of Ashes)

"...Because you can't argue with all the fools in the world. It's easier to let them have their way, then trick them when they're not paying attention."
— Christopher Paolini (Eragon)

"Certainty of death, small chance of success... well, what're we waiting for?

(From The Lord of the Rings screenplay by Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens; incorrectly attributed to JRR Tolkien)"
— J.R.R. Tolkien

"I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing."
— Neil Gaiman (The Sandman Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones)