"This was the tree, and it seemed to me standing there to resemble those men, the giants of your childhood, whom you encounter years later and find that they are not merely smaller in relation to your growth, but they are absolutely smaller, shrunken by age. In this double demotion the old giants have become pygmies while you were looking the other way."
— John Knowles (A Separate Peace)

"All the Animals in the barnyard are equal, except the Pigs are more equal than the others."
— George Orwell (Animal Farm)

"I would prefer not to."
— Herman Melville (Bartleby The Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street)

"You always get weirdos like Edward who seem to attract women for some reason. If Edward wasn’t a fictional character and you met him in reality he is like one of those guys who would probably be an axe murderer or something."
— Stephenie Meyer (The Twilight Saga)

"I’ve been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald

"If it wasn’t for the mist we could see your home across the bay," said Gatsby. "You always have a green light that burns at the end of your dock."
Daisy put her arm through his abruptly but he seemed absorbed in what he had just said. Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever. Compared to the great distance that had separated him from Daisy it had seemed very near to him, almost touching her. It had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted things had diminished by one."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)

"Sometimes, when I clean a kill, I feed Buttercup the entrails. He has stopped hissing at me.

Entrails. No hissing. This is the closest we will ever come to love."
— Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games)

"Deep in the meadow, hidden far away
A cloak of leaves, a moonbeam ray
Forget your woes and let your troubles lay
And when it's morning again, they'll wash away
Here it's safe, here it's warm
Here the daisies guard you from every harm
Here your dreams are sweet and tomorrow brings them true
Here is the place where I love you."
— Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games)

"[Winston writes in his forbidden diary]
Winston Smith: April the 4th, 1984. To the past, or to the future. To an age when thought is free. From the Age of Big Brother, from the Age of the Thought Police, from a dead man... greetings."
— George Orwell

"Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4."
— 1984

"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever."
— George Orwell (1984)

"Magiere was oblivious."
— Hendee

"A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil. "
— Tim O'Brien (The Things They Carried)

"But in a story, which is a kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world."
— Tim O'Brien

"A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth."
— Tim O'Brien (The Things They Carried)

"It was my view then, and still is, that you don't make war without knowing why. Knowledge of course, is always imperfect, but it seemed to me that when a nation goes to war it must have reasonable confidence in the justice and imperative of its cause. You can't fix your mistakes. Once people are dead, you can't make them undead."
— Tim O'Brien (The Things They Carried)

"The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head. There is the illusion of aliveness."
— Tim O'Brien (The Things They Carried)

"And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It's about sunlight. It's about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know you must cross the river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do. It's about love and memory. It's about sorrow. It's about sisters who never write back and people who never listen."
— Tim O'Brien

"Forty-three years old, and the war occurred half a lifetime ago, and yet the remembering makes it now. And sometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever. That's what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story."
— Tim O'Brien

"I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth."
— Tim O'Brien (The Things They Carried)

"All that peace, man, if felt so good it hurt. I want to hurt it back."
— Tim O'Brien

"Everything was such a damned nice idea when it was an idea."
— Tim O'Brien (Northern Lights)

"You don't know. When I'm out there at night I feel close to my own body, I can feel my blood moving, my skin and fingernails, everything, it's like I'm full of electricity and I'm glowing in the dark - I'm on fire almost - I'm burning away into nothing - but it doesn't matter because I know exactly who I am."
— Tim O'Brien (The Things They Carried)

"My mother began to go crazy. Not in a 'Let's paint the kitchen red!' sort of way. But crazy in a 'gas oven, toothpaste sandwhich, I am God' sort of way."
— Augusten Burroughs (Running with Scissors: A Memoir)

"We were young. We were bored. And the old electroshock therapy machine was just under the stairs in a box next to the Hoover."
— Augusten Burroughs (Running With Scissors)

"I couldn't help but think, This car is taking me to a mental hospital and my mother is treating it like open-mic night at a Greenwich Village café."
— Augusten Burroughs (Running with Scissors: A Memoir)

"I did not consider him to be any kind of a genius. I considered him deeply lacking in the area that mattered most in life. Star quality."
— Augusten Burroughs (Running with Scissors: A Memoir)

"In addition to calling each other standard names like bitch and whore, the Finches incoporated Freud's stages of psychosexual development into their arsenal of invectives.

"You're so oral. You'll never make it to genital! The most you can ever hope for is to reach anal, you immature, frigid old maid," Natalie yelled.

"Stop antagonizing me," Hope shouted. "Just stop transfering all this anger onto me."

"Your avoidance tactics are not giong to work, Miss Hope," Natalie warned. "I'm not going to let you just slink away from me. You hate me and you have to confront me."

"
— Augusten Burroughs (Running with Scissors: A Memoir)

"I know exactly how that is. To love somebody who doesn’t deserve it. Because they are all you have. Because any attention is better than no attention. For exactly the same reason, it is sometimes satisfying to cut yourself and bleed. On those gray days where eight in the morning looks no different from noon and nothing has happened and nothing is going to happen and you are washing a glass in the sink and it breaks-accidentally-and punctures your skin. And then there is this shocking red, the brightest thing in the day, so vibrant it buzzes, this blood of yours. That is okay sometimes because at least you know you’re alive."
— Augusten Burroughs (Running with Scissors: A Memoir)

"I just look at her and she creeps me out. She looks like she would eat a baby. Not that she's fat. She just looks hungry in some dangerous way that can't be explained. She's always so nice and friendly. Exactly the disposition of a baby killer."
— Augusten Burroughs (Running with Scissors: A Memoir)

"My brother was born without taste or the desire to be professionally lit."
— Augusten Burroughs (Running with Scissors: A Memoir)

"It’s a wonder I’m even alive. Sometimes I think that. I think that I can’t believe I haven’t killed myself. But there’s something in me that just keeps going on. I think it has something to do with tomorrow, that there is always one, and that everything can change when it comes."
— Augusten Burroughs (Running with Scissors: A Memoir)

"I'm saying that I'm a moody, insecure, narrow-minded, jealous, borderline homicidal bitch, and I want you to promise me that you're okay with that, because it's who I am, and you're what I need."
— Jeaniene Frost (Halfway to the Grave)

"Would you mind repeating that? I'm afraid I might have lost my wits altogether and just hallucinated what I've longed to hear."
— Jeaniene Frost (Halfway to the Grave)

"The clock struck eleven and cat the vampire huntress was on the loose, except my battle armor was a push-up bra, curled hair, and a short dress. Yeah, it was a dirty job, but I was going to do it. Come one, come all, bloodsuckers! Bar’s open!"
— Jeaniene Frost (Halfway to the Grave)

"Let's go, Kitten, before you kill someone else. -Bones"
— Jeaniene Frost (Halfway to the Grave)

"Aside from the obvious, Francesca, what do you want in return for supplying information?” Bones asked, getting back to the subject. “You to take me,” she replied at once. “Not gonna happen!” I spat, squeezing him possessively. Three sets of widened eyes fixed on me. That’s when I realized that what I had a firm grip on was no longer his hand."
— Jeaniene Frost (Halfway to the Grave)

"Playing with fire Kitten?"
— Jeaniene Frost (Halfway to the Grave)

"Hey, ah, does anyone want a cookie or something? Oh yeah. A cookie. That would make everything better. Dunked in a shot of tequila , maybe? Or better yet, just the bottle? Yeah, that ought to do it."
— Kim Harrison (Every Which Way But Dead)

"That's why I want you there, he said. You're unpredictable, and that can be the difference between success and failure. Most people make decisions in anger, fear, love, or obligation. You make decisions to irritate people."
— Kim Harrison

""By Tink's diaphram...!""
— Kim Harrison

"Jenks enthusiastically leaned against the counter and opened the box. Bypassing the plastic knife, he broke off about a third of it and took a huge bite. Ivy watched, appalled, and I shrugged. His mouth moving as he hummed, Jenks finished unpacking the sacks. I was half dead, Ivy was whoring herself to keep me safe, but Jenks was okay as long as he had chocolate."
— Kim Harrison (A Fistful of Charms)

" 'Plan B?' Ivy said. 'What is plan B?'
Jenks reddened. 'Grab the fish and run like hell,' he muttered, and I almost giggled."
— Kim Harrison (A Fistful of Charms)

"Maybe he thinks he can rescue me? No one is that stupid. "
— Kim Harrison (The Outlaw Demon Wails)

" 'Ivy!' I stammered, then glared at Kisten. 'You told Ivy? Thanks a hell of a lot. Want to call my mom next?'"
— Kim Harrison (Every Which Way But Dead)

" 'You had this all planned, didn’t you?' I accused. 'Thought you could come in here and seduce me like you do everyone else?' It wasn’t as if I could be angry, lying atop him as I was, but I tried."
— Kim Harrison (Every Which Way But Dead)

"God, if you ever loved me, open my eyes for me when I'm being this stupid! (Ron)"
— Kim Harrison (Once Dead, Twice Shy)

"A witch, a vampire, and a pixy walk into a bar, I thought as I led the way into the Squirrel’s End. It was early, and the sun had yet to set when the door swung shut behind Jenks, sealing us in the warm air smelling faintly of smoke. Immediately Nick yanked it open to come in behind us. And there’s the punch line."
— Kim Harrison (A Fistful of Charms)

"I gestured my frustration. “I don’t know. She’s much better already. She wasn’t talking half an hour ago.
Look at her now.”
We all turned, finding Ceri sobbing quietly and drinking her tea in small reverent sips as the pixy girls
hovered over her. Three were plating her long, fair hair and another was singing to her.
“Okay,” I said as we turned back. “Bad example.”"
— Kim Harrison (Every Which Way But Dead)

"Your welcome means more to me, Ivy Alisha Tamwood, than a thousand souls. Watching Rachel work is a wonder of one catastrophe after another."
— Kim Harrison