"I dont care so much about beeing famous. I just want to be smart like other pepul so I can have lots of friends who like me (14)."
— Daniel Keyes (Flowers for Algernon)

"She says Im a fine person and Ill show them all. I asked her why. She said never mind but I shouldnt feel bad if I find out that everybody isnt nice like I think. She said for a person who God gave so little to you did more than a lot of people with brains they never even used (35)."
— Daniel Keyes (Flowers for Algernon)

"Now I know what they mean when they say 'to pull a Charlie Gordon.' I'm ashamed (41)."
— Daniel Keyes (Flowers for Algernon)

"If they gave him enough time--if they didn't rush him or push him too fast--he would get it. But nobody has time (61)."
— Daniel Keyes (Flowers for Algernon)

"Now I understand one of the important reasons for going to college and getting an education is to learn that the things you've believed in all your life aren't true, and that nothing is what it appears to be (65)."
— Daniel Keyes (Flowers for Algernon)

"It had been all right as long as they could laugh at me and appear clever at my expense, but now they were feeling inferior to the moron. I began to see that by my astonishing growth I had made them shrink and emphasized their inadequacies. I had betrayed them, and they hated me for it (96)."
— Daniel Keyes (Flowers for Algernon)

"How strange it is that people of honest feelings and sensibility, who would not take advantage of a man born without arms or legs or eyes--how such people think nothing of abusing a man born with low intelligence. It infuriated me to remember that not too long ago I--like this little boy--had foolishly played the clown (177)."
— Daniel Keyes (Flowers for Algernon)

"I realize that emotional problems can't be solved as intellectual problems are. That's what I discovered about myself last night. I told myself I was wandering around like a lost soul, and then I saw that I was lost (180)."
— Daniel Keyes (Flowers for Algernon)

"He knew that would not do, of course. Having faith in God did not mean sitting back and doing nothing. It meant believing that you would find success if you did your best honestly and energetically (417)"
— Ken Follett (The Pillars of the Earth)

"He stayed where he was, watching the door, but she did not reemerge. It was an odd thing to do, to stand in a street in the hope of seeing someone who hardly knew him; but he did not want to move. He was seething inside with new emotion. Nothing seemed very important except the Princess. He was single-minded about her. He was enchanted. He was possessed. He was in love (437)."
— Ken Follett (The Pillars of the Earth)

"They turned toward Kingsbridge. It was twenty miles away. Philip began to walk. He felt wonderful. The return of Remigius more than compensated for the quarry. I lost in court, he thought, but that was only about stones. What I gained was something infinitely more valuable. Today I won a man's soul (880)."
— Ken Follett (The Pillars of the Earth)

"Men just like the ones who killed his mother and father had now murdered an archbishop in a cathedral, as if to prove, beyond all possibility of doubt, that there was no authority that could prevail against the tyranny of a man with a sword (958)."
— Ken Follett (The Pillars of the Earth)

"The death of Thomas had shown that, in a conflict between the Church and the Crown, the monarch could always prevail by the use of brute force. But the cult of Saint Thomas proved that such a victory would always be a hollow one. The power of a king was not absolute, after all: it could be restrained by the will of the people (972)."
— Ken Follett

"He was fifteen and could not remember ever crying before, not as a child when his father had died so brutally; not in bond when his mother slipped away so quietly in her sleep; not when Likkarn had tormented him with the memory of his father's death under the feral claws. He sobbed-- for this lost chance, for the death of Blood Brother, for the aching sores on his back, and even with the remembered pain of his parents' loss (45)"
— Jane Yolen (Dragon's Blood)

"'I never considered. I never considered--' he began. 'I mean, I never thought that once I was a master, it meant I could own bonders. I don't think I want that. I don't think I want that at all.' 'Well, what did you think being a master meant?' asked Errikkin, incredulously. 'I thought it meant, well, being free. And doing what you wanted when you wanted. Like sleeping late. Or like training your own dragon...' (135)."
— Jane Yolen (Dragon's Blood)

"'No man is my master,' she said. He was shocked into silence. 'No man's gold will fill my bag,' she said, and jangled her bag at him. It was totally empty (158)."
— Jane Yolen (Dragon's Blood)

"Depression affects 20 percent of all women, 10 percent of all men, and 5 percent of all adolescents worldwide (7)."
— Eleanor H. Ayer (Everything You Need to Know About Depression)

"More than 5 percent of Americans--some 18 million people--suffer from clinical depression at any given moment (10)."
— Eleanor H. Ayer (Everything You Need to Know About Depression)

"An enduring myth is that people with depression cannot function, when actually 72 percent of depressed individuals remain in the workforce (12)."
— Eleanor H. Ayer (Everything You Need to Know About Depression)

"To guard against depression: 1) Stay involved with other people. 2) Avoid becoming isolated. 3) Pursue hobbies and interests. 4) Strengthen other family connections (42)."
— Eleanor H. Ayer (Everything You Need to Know About Depression)

"Constant negative thinking can cause a person to slide deeper and deeper into self-hatred. Cognitive-behavioral therapy attempts to stop the mind from turning minor upsets into catastrophes (50-51)."
— Eleanor H. Ayer (Everything You Need to Know About Depression)

"Nondrug therapies: 1) Exercise. A large amount of research shows that aerobic exercise elevates mood, relieves anxiety, and improves appetite, sleep, and self-esteem. Studies show that it also normalizes chemical imbalances in the brain linked to depression. 2) Herbal medicines. Several medicinal herbs have antidepressant effects. The most powerful is St. John's Wort, a natural SSRI and mild MAOI. In addition, kava-kava, ginkgo, and SAM-e may also help. 3) Dietary supplements. Certain vitamin deficiencies, notably B1, B2, B6, and colic acid can cause depression. However keep in mind that too much of certain vitamins can also cause problems. 4) Alternative treatments. The United Nations World Health Organization recognizes acupuncture as an effective treatment for moderate depression. Other helpful treatments include massage therapy, music and art therapy, yoga, and meditation (54-55)."
— Eleanor H. Ayer (Everything You Need to Know About Depression)

"'Son, what you need is a real live girl,' he concluded. 'A figure with a personality, who will talk back to you. It is far more challenging to develop a relationship with a complete woman, and often extremely frustrating...But in the long run it is also far more rewarding. What you sought in the wild oats was a shortcut--but in life there are no shortcuts' (18)."
— Piers Anthony (A Spell for Chameleon)

"At least Roland had understood. 'One day you'll discover that the opinions of worthless people are worthless,' he had murmured to Bink. 'You have to do it your own way. I comprehend that, and wish you well--on your own' (20)."
— Piers Anthony (A Spell for Chameleon)

"'Your teacher didn't lie to you. A centaur never lies. He merely edited his information, on orders from the King, so as not to force on the impressionable minds of children things their parents did not want them to hear. Education has ever been thus' (38)."
— Piers Anthony (A Spell for Chameleon)

"'What does she offer you that I cannot better a hundred-fold?' 'Well, self-respect, for one thing,' Bink said. 'She wants me for myself, not to use me.' 'Nonsense. All women are the same inside. They differ only in appearance and talent. They all use men.' (93)."
— Piers Anthony (A Spell for Chameleon)

"Illusions could kill--if one heeded them...When illusion became an essential crutch to life, that life lost value (96-97)."
— Piers Anthony (A Spell for Chameleon)

"'Women are the curse of mankind,' Crombie said vehemently. 'They trap men into marriage, the way this tangle tree traps prey, and they torment them the rest of their lives' (118). "
— Piers Anthony (A Spell for Chameleon)

"'What question did you bring?' Bink inquired somewhat nervously...'I asked whether I have a soul,' the monster said seriously. Again Bink had to control his reaction. A year's service for a philosophical question? 'What did he tell you?' 'That only those who possess souls are concerned about them.' 'But--but then you never needed to ask. You paid a year for nothing.' 'No. I paid a year for everything. Possession of a soul means that I can never truly die. My body may slough away, but I shall be reborn, or if not, my shade will linger to settle unfinished accounts, or I shall reside forever in heaven or hell. My future is assured; I shall never suffer oblivion. There is no more vital question or answer. Yet that answer had to be in the proper form. A simple yes or no answer would not have satisfied me; it could be a blind guess, or merely the Magician's offhand opinion. A detailed technical treatise would merely have obfuscated the matter. Humfrey phrased it in such a way that its truth was self-evident. Now I need never doubt again.' Bink was moved. Considered that way, it did make sense. Humfrey had delivered good value. He was an honest Magician. He had shown the manticora--and Bink himself--something vital about the nature of life in Xanth. If the fiercest conglomerate monsters had souls, with all that implied, who could condemn them as evil? (141)."
— Piers Anthony (A Spell for Chameleon)

"'Bink's an exile, you're banished, and I'm ugly,' Fanchon muttered. 'We'll never be out of trouble' (220)."
— Piers Anthony (A Spell for Chameleon)

"'I don't want my kingdom this way,' Trent told her. 'Once I would have done it, but I have changed in twenty years, and in the past two weeks. I have learned the true history of Xanth, and I know too well the sorrow of untimely death. My honor came late to my life, but it grows stronger; it will not let me kill a man who has saved my life, and who is loyal to his unworthy monarch that he sacrifices his life in defense of the one who has exiled him.' He looked at the dying doe. 'And I would never voluntarily kill the girl who, lacking the intelligence to be cunning, yields up her own welfare for the life of that man. This is true love, of the kind I once knew. I could not save mine, but I would not destroy that of another. The throne simply is not worth this moral price.' (318-19)."
— Piers Anthony (A Spell for Chameleon)

"'Better to die with honor than to live in dishonor, though a throne be served up as temptation. Perhaps it was not power I sought, but perfection of self' (319)."
— Piers Anthony (A Spell for Chameleon)

"Bink thought about how much of his adventure had centered around Chameleon's quest for a spell to make her normal--when she really was quite satisfactory, and even somewhat challenging, as she was. How many people similarly spent their lives searching for their own spells--some gratuitous benefit such as a silver tree or political power or undeserved acclaim--when all they really needed was to be satisfied with what they already had? Sometimes what they had was better than what they thought they wanted. Chameleon had thought she wanted to be normal; Trent had thought he wanted armed conquest; and Bink himself had thought he wanted a demonstrable magic talent. Everyone thought he wanted something. But Bink's real quest, at the end, has been to preserve Chameleon and Trent and himself as they were, and to make Xanth accept them that way. (343-44)."
— Piers Anthony (A Spell for Chameleon)

"Trent guffawed. Then Bink was kissing her--his ordinary, extraordinary girl. She had found her spell, all right; she had cast it over him. It was the same as Crombie's curse--love. And at last Bink understood the meaning of his omen: he was the hawk who had carried away Chameleon. She would never get free (344)."
— Piers Anthony (A Spell for Chameleon)

"Hospitals are where people go to be saved, but the doctors can only patch you up, put you back together. They can't undo the damage. They can't make it so you didn't wake up in the bad place, or change the truth to lies (3)."
— Laurell K. Hamilton (Swallowing Darkness (Meredith Gentry, #7))

"Humans still have a tendency to think that good is always pretty and that evil is always ugly. I've found that it's so often the other way around (35)."
— Laurell K. Hamilton (Swallowing Darkness (Meredith Gentry, #7))

"But I knew she was gone. There might be moments of breath, and pulse, but it was not life. It was what the body does at the end sometimes, when the mind and soul are gone, but the body doesn't understand yet that death has come, and there is no more (58)."
— Laurell K. Hamilton (Swallowing Darkness (Meredith Gentry, #7))

"People say that it's light that fades when humans die, but it's not; it's them. The look in their eyes that makes them who they are, that is what fades (93)."
— Laurell K. Hamilton (Swallowing Darkness (Meredith Gentry, #7))

"'The Goddess is all things at all times. There is never life without death, never light without darkness, never pain without hope. I am the Goddess, I am creation and destruction. I am the cradle of life, and the end of the world. You would destroy me, Ash Lord, but you cannot' (103)."
— Laurell K. Hamilton (Swallowing Darkness (Meredith Gentry, #7))

"People only follow you for two reasons, love and fear. Money didn't mean anything in faerie. I preferred love, but tonight my enemies had proven that there were more of them than I had known and that there were too many plots to reason with them all. When love and sweet reason will not work, you are left with fear and ruthlessness (107)."
— Laurell K. Hamilton (Swallowing Darkness (Meredith Gentry, #7))

"They say that being pregnant makes women softer, gentler, but in that moment I understood why so many religions have goddesses who are both creators and destroyers. I was barely pregnant, and I was already willing to do things that once would have made me hesitate. The time for hesitation was past (108)."
— Laurell K. Hamilton (Swallowing Darkness (Meredith Gentry, #7))

"I prayed, 'Goddess, help me save them. Help me fight for them.' I had no power in me to fight the dark and the very air made too heavy to breathe, but I prayed all the same, because when all else is lost, there is always prayer (308)."
— Laurell K. Hamilton (Swallowing Darkness (Meredith Gentry, #7))

"War in the abstract is a confusing thing. War on the ground, in the middle of a battle, is not. When someone shoots at you, they are your enemy, and you shoot back. When someone tries to kill you, they are your enemy, and you try to kill them first. War is complicated, battle is not (310)."
— Laurell K. Hamilton (Swallowing Darkness (Meredith Gentry, #7))

"A body doesn't feel like your loved one once it grows cold. It's like touching a doll. No, I have no words for what it feels like to touch someone you love once their body has given up its warmth (314)."
— Laurell K. Hamilton (Swallowing Darkness (Meredith Gentry, #7))

"In a sense Lolita is too great for its own good. It rushes up on the reader like a recreational drug more powerful than any yet discovered or devised. In common with its narrator, it is both irresistible and unforgivable. And yet it all works out. I shall point the way to what I take to be its livid and juddering heart - which is itself in prethrombotic turmoil, all heaves and lifts and thrills (vii)."
— Martin Amis

"Although he distances himself with customary hauteur from the world of 'coal sheds and alleyways,' of panting maniacs and howling policemen, Humbert Humbert is without question an honest-to-God, open-and-shut sexual deviant, displaying classic ruthlessness, guile, and (above all) attention to detail (vii-viii)."
— Martin Amis

"Lolita herself is such an anthology piece by now that even non-readers of the novel can close their eyes and see her on the tennis court or in the swimming pool or curled up in the car seat or the motel twin bed with her 'ridiculous' comics. We tend to forget that this blinding creation remains just that: a creation, and a creation of Humbert Humbert's. We have only Humbert's word for her (x-xi)."
— Martin Amis

"In his afterword Nabokov explains that the first 'shiver' of Lolita was inspired by a newspaper story about an ape, 'who after months of coaxing by a scientist, produced the first drawing ever charcoaled by an animal: this sketch showed the bars of the poor creature's cage.' Inspiration needn't be very apposite; but the appositeness of this 'first little throb' has perhaps been misemphasized. It's no so much that Lolita has been engaged and enslaved, though she has been. Humbert's crime is to force her out of nature-- to force a child through the hoops of womanhood, insulting and degrading her childish essence (xx)."
— Martin Amis

"I have no intention to glorify 'H.H.' No doubt, he is horrible, he is abject, he is a shining example of moral leprosy, a mixture of ferocity and jocularity that betrays supreme misery perhaps, but is not conducive to attractiveness. He is ponderously capricious. Many of his casual opinions on the people and scenery of this country are ludicrous. A desperate honesty that throbs through his confession does not absolve him from sins of diabolical cunning. He is abnormal. He is not a gentleman. But how magically his singing violin can conjure up a tendresse, a compassion for Lolita that makes us entranced with the book while abhorring the author (5)."
— Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita)

"As a case history, 'Lolita' will become, no doubt, a classic in psychiatric circles. As a work of art, it transcends its expiatory aspects; and still more important to us than scientific significance and literary worth, is the ethical impact the book should have on the serious reader; for in this poignant personal study there lurks a general lesson; the wayward child, the egotistic mother, the panting maniac -- these are not only vivid characters in a unique story; they warn us of dangerous trends; they point out potent evils. 'Lolita' should make all of us -- parents, social workers, educators -- apply ourselves with still greater vigilance and vision to the task of bringing up a better generation in a safer world (5). "
— Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita)