"A room without books is like a body without a soul."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero

"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened."
— Dr. Seuss

"I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."
— Marilyn Monroe

"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."
— John Lennon

"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You too? I thought I was the only one."
— C.S. Lewis

"Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"To be great is to be misunderstood. "
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Whenever I see an old lady slip and fall on a wet sidewalk, my first instinct is to laugh. But then I think, what if I was an ant, and she fell on me. Then it wouldn't seem quite so funny."
— Jack Handey (Deep Thoughts)

"You are my sweetest downfall. I loved you first, I loved you first."
— Regina Spektor

"You're young until you're not
You love until you don't
You try until you can't
You laugh until you cry
You cry until you laugh
And everyone must breathe
Until their dying breath"
— Regina Spektor

"For whatever we lose (like a you or a me),
It's always our self we find in the sea."
— e.e. cummings

"Kisses are a better fate than wisdom."
— e.e. cummings

"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on."
— Robert Frost

"A day without sunshine is like, you know, night."
— Steve Martin

"And your very flesh shall be a great poem."
— Walt Whitman

"The real war will never get in the books."
— Walt Whitman

"If I had a flower for every time I thought of you...I could walk through my garden forever."
— Alfred Lord Tennyson

"So sad, so fresh the days that are no more."
— Alfred Lord Tennyson

"Hope smiles on the threshold of the year to come, whispering that it will be better."
— Alfred Lord Tennyson

"The words 'far, far away' had always a strange charm."
— Alfred Lord Tennyson

"This is how it works:
You're young until you're not,
You love until you don't,
You try until you can't;
You laugh until you cry,
You cry until you laugh,
And everyone must breathe
Until their dying breath...
No, this is how it works:
You peer inside yourself,
You take the things you like,
And try to love the things you took;
And then you take that love you made,
And stick it into some
Someone else's heart,
Pumping someone else's blood --
And walking arm in arm,
You hope it don't get harmed,
But even if it does
You just do it all again..."
— Regina Spektor

"Love is watching someone die. So who's gonna watch you die?"
— Death Cab For Cutie

"And I have learned that even landlocked lovers yearn for the sea like navy men
‘Cause now we say goodnight from our own separate sides like brothers on a hotel bed"
— Death Cab for Cutie

""And I do believe it’s true
That there are roads left in both of our shoes
But if the silence takes you
Then I hope it takes me too
So brown eyes I hold you near
Cause you’re the only song I want to hear
A melody softly soaring through my atmosphere"
"
— Death Cab for Cutie

"Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness."
— Maya Angelou

"Unbeing dead isn't being alive."
— e.e. cummings

"the earth laughs in flowers."
— e.e. cummings

"may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone."
— e.e. cummings

"Lovers alone wear sunlight."
— e.e. cummings

"since the thing perhaps is
to eat flowers and not to be afraid"
— e.e. cummings (E.E. Cummings: Complete Poems 1904-1962)

"Then I thought, boy, isn't that just typical? You wait and wait and wait for something, and then when it happens, you feel sad."
— Sharon Creech (Absolutely Normal Chaos)

"Maybe everybody in the whole damn world's scared of each other."
— John Steinbeck (Of Mice and Men)

"As happens sometimes, a moment settled and hovered and remained for much more than a moment. And sound stopped and movement stopped for much, much more than a moment."
— John Steinbeck (Of Mice and Men)

"A guy needs somebody - to be near him. A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. Don't make no difference who the guy is, long's he's with you. I tell ya, I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an' he gets sick.
"
— John Steinbeck (Of Mice and Men)

"Lennie rolled off the bunk and stood up, and the two of them started for the door. Just as they reached it, Curley bounced in.
"You seen a girl around here?" he demanded angrily.
George said coldly, "'Bout half an hour ago maybe."
"Well, what the hell was she doin'?"
George stood still, watching the angry little man. He said insultingly, "She said--she was lookin' for you."
Curley seemed really to see George for the first time. His eyes flashed over George, took in his height, measured his reach, looked at his trim middle. "Well, which way'd she go?" he demanded at last.
"I dunno," said George. "I didn't watch her go."
Curley scowled at him, and turning, hurried out the door.
George said, "Ya know, Lennie, I'm scared I'm gonna tangle with that bastard myself. I hate his guts. Jesus Christ! Come on. There won't be a damn thing left to eat."
— John Steinbeck (Of Mice and Men)

"His ear heard more than what was said to him, and his slow speech had overtones not of thought, but of understanding beyond thought."
— John Steinbeck (Of Mice and Men)

""We could live offa the fatta the lan'.""
— John Steinbeck (Of Mice and Men)

"No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself."
— John Steinbeck (The Winter of Our Discontent)

"I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others -- The only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad."
— Jonathan Safran Foer (Everything Is Illuminated)

"And now," cried Max, "let the wild rumpus start!"
— Maurice Sendak (Where the Wild Things Are)

"And [he] sailed back over a year
and in and out of weeks
and through a day
and into the night of his very own room
where he found his supper waiting for him
and it was still hot"
— Maurice Sendak (Where the Wild Things Are)

"Inside all of us is a Wild Thing"
— Maurice Sendak (Where the Wild Things Are)

"When gods die, they die hard. It's not like they fade away, or grow old, or fall asleep. They die in fire and pain, and when they come out of you, they leave your guts burned. It hurts more than anything you can talk about. And maybe worst of all is, you're not sure if there will ever be another god to fill their place. Or if you'd ever want another god to fill their place. You don't want the fire to go out inside you twice."
— Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars)

"Think of the sound you make when you let go after holding your breath for a very, very long time. Think of the gladdest sound you know: the sound of dawn on the first day of spring break, the sound of a bottle of Coke opening, the sound of a crowd cheering in your ears because you're coming down to the last part of a race--and you're ahead. Think of the sound of water over stones in a cold stream, and the sound of wind through green trees on a late May afternoon in Central Park. Think of the sound of a bus coming into the station carrying someone you love.
Then put all those together."
— Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars)

"I saw my town as if I had just arrived. It was as if I was waking up. You see houses and buildings every day, and you walk by them on your way to something else, and you hardly see. You hardly notice they're even there, mostly because there's something else going on right in front of your face, But when the town itself becomes the thing that is going on right in front of your face, it all changes, and you're not just looking at a house, but at what's happened in that house before you were born."
— Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars)