"The sense of unhappiness is so much easier to convey than that of happiness. In misery we seem aware of our own existence, even though it may be in the form of a monstrous egotism: this pain of mine is individual, this nerve that winces belongs to me and to no other. But happiness annihilates us: we lose our identity."
— Graham Greene

"It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.
It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain!I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithlessand therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see beauty even when it's not pretty, every day,and if you can source your own life from its presence.
I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!”
It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.
It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.
It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments."
— Oriah Mountain Dreamer

"We've walked together down this winding road,
In search of something true. Together we grew.

But now our journey has come to an end,
And it's on to something new. For me and you.

So goodbye, my friend.
Until we meet again,
Some other day.
I know so much will change.
But looking back I can say,
I wouldn't change a day.
I hope you can say, I hope you can say
The same.

So many memories, we got to make,
The challenges we met. I'll never forget.

'Cause those lessons made us who we are today,
Now we're taking the next step. Without a regret.
No regret.

All I'm telling you (All I'm telling you)
'Til I get to the end. I would do it again. Do it again.
"
— Hoobastank

"I have lots of things to teach you now, in case we ever meet,
concerning the message that was transmitted to me under a pine tree
in North Carolina on a cold winter moonlit night. It said that
Nothing Ever Happened, so don't worry. It's all like a dream.
Everything is ecstasy, inside. We just don't know it because of our thinking-minds.
But in our true blissful essence of mind is known that everything is alright
forever and forever and forever. Close your eyes, let your hands
and nerve-ends drop, stop breathing for 3 seconds, listen to the silence
inside the illusion of the world, and you will remember the lesson
you forgot, which was taught in immense milky way soft cloud innumerable worlds
long ago and not even at all. It is all one vast awakened thing. I call it the golden eternity.
It is perfect. We were never really born, we will never really die. It has nothing to do
with the imaginary idea of a personal self, other selves, many selves everywhere:
Self is only an idea, a mortal idea. That which passes into everything is one thing.
It's a dream already ended. There's nothing to be afraid of and nothing to be glad about.
I know this from staring at mountains months on end. They never show any expression,
they are like empty space. Do you think the emptiness of space will ever crumble away?
Mountains will crumble, but the emptiness of space, which is the one universal essence
of mind, the vast awakenerhood, empty and awake, will never crumble away because
it was never born."
Selected Letters 1957-1969 and is a letter he wrote to his first wife, Edie in 1957."
— Jack Kerouac (The Portable Jack Kerouac)

"Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you've never been hurt and live like it's heaven on Earth."
— Mark Twain

"Just going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in your garage makes you a car."
— G.K. Chesterton

"A lot of fellows nowadays have a B.A., M.D., or Ph.D. Unfortunately, they don't have a J.O.B."
— Fats Domino

"You spend your whole life trying to get people to like you and then you run over one person with your car - not even one of the popular ones - and everybody gets on your case. Doesn't make any sense."
— Michael Scott

"I bet a funny thing about driving a car off a cliff is, while you're in midair, you still hit those brakes."
— Jack Handey

"Calvin (to Suzy)- You know, sometimes kids get bad grades in school because the class moves too slow for them. Einstein got D's in school. Well guess what, I get F's!!!"
— Bill Watterson

"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

"Anyone who thinks sitting in church can make you a Christian must also think that sitting in a garage can make you a car."
— Garrison Keillor

"Reality continues to ruin my life."
— Bill Watterson (The Complete Calvin and Hobbes)

"The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four people is suffering from a mental illness. Look at your 3 best friends. If they're ok, then it's you."
— Rita Mae Brown

"Go to heaven for the climate and hell for the company."
— Mark Twain

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

"I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours."
— Jerome K. Jerome

"The reason I talk to myself is because I’m the only one whose answers I accept."
— George Carlin

"When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, "Why god? Why me?" and the thundering voice of God answered, There's just something about you that pisses me off."
— Stephen King (Storm of the Century: An Original Screenplay)

"From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down, I convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend on reading it."
— Groucho Marx

"What did you do to this?" He asked in a horrorstruck voice.
"It didn't want to come out of the dashboard."
"So you felt the need to torture it?"
"You know how I am with tools. No pain was inflicted intentionally."
He shook his head, his face a mask of faux tragedy."You killed it."
— Stephenie Meyer (Eclipse)

"Sometimes when I'm talking, my words can't keep up with my thoughts. I wonder why we think faster than we speak. Probably so we can think twice."
— Bill Watterson

"THE FIRST TEN LIES THEY TELL YOU IN HIGH SCHOOL

1. We are here to help you.
2. You will have time to get to your class before the bell rings.
3. The dress code will be enforced.
4. No smoking is allowed on school grounds.
5. Our football team will win the championship this year.
6. We expect more of you here.
7. Guidance counselors are always available to listen.
8. Your schedule was created with you in mind.
9. Your locker combination is private.
10. These will be the years you look back on fondly.

TEN MORE LIES THEY TELL YOU IN HIGH SCHOOL

1. You will use algebra in your adult lives.
2. Driving to school is a privilege that can be taken away.
3. Students must stay on campus during lunch.
4. The new text books will arrive any day now.
5. Colleges care more about you than your SAT scores.
6. We are enforcing the dress code.
7. We will figure out how to turn off the heat soon.
8. Our bus drivers are highly trained professionals.
9. There is nothing wrong with summer school.
10. We want to hear what you have to say."
— Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak)

"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."
— Bill Watterson (The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book)

"Reading is one form of escape. Running for your life is another."
— Lemony Snicket

"You can only be young once. But you can always be immature"
— Dave Barry

"Is that a bulletproof vest? See, now that's so insulting. That's like saying I'm not smart enough to shoot you in the head."
Eddie DeChooch"
— Janet Evanovich (Seven Up)

"Ms. Wormwood: Calvin, can you tell us what Lewis and Clark did?

Calvin: No, but I can recite the secret superhero origin of each member of Captain Napalm's Thermonuclear League of Liberty.

Ms. Wormwood: See me after class, Calvin.

Calvin: [retrospectively] I'm not dumb. I just have a command of thoroughly useless information."
— Bill Watterson

"Somebody just gave me a shower radio. Thanks a lot. Do you really want music in the shower? I guess there's no better place to dance than a slick surface next to a glass door."
— Jerry Seinfeld

"I suppose I'll have to add the force of gravity to my list of enemies."
— Lemony Snicket (The Penultimate Peril)

"I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.

Letter to Joseph Twichell, 9/13/1898"
— Mark Twain

"You should never underestimate the predictability of stupidity. "
— Bullet Tooth Tony (Snatch)

"The problem with winter sports is that -- follow me closely here -- they generally take place in winter."
— Dave Barry

"What happened to happily ever after?

Reality killed it."
— Kenzie

"Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself."
— Robert Frost

"I'm killing time while I wait for life to shower me with meaning and happiness."
— Bill Watterson

"Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent"
— Victor Hugo

"Sometimes I think I must have a Guardian Idiot. A little invisible spirit just behind my shoulder, looking out for me...only he's an imbecile."
— Spider Robinson (Off the Wall at Callahan's)

"The leading cause of death among fashion models is falling through street grates."
— Dave Barry

"Thinking is hard work, which is why you don't see many people doing it."
— Sue Grafton

"(writing, after being asked to explain Newton's First Law of Motion "in his own words"): Yakka foob mog. Grug pubbawup zink wattoom gazork. Chumble spuzz. (speaking) I love loopholes."
— Bill Watterson (There's Treasure Everywhere)

"One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continually stating and repeating the very very obvious."
— Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

"I wonder if you can refuse to inherit the world."
— Bill Watterson (The Essential Calvin and Hobbes)

"Dance like it hurts. Love like you need money. Work when people are watching. -- Dogbert's Motto "
— Scott Adams

"If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life."
— Terry Pratchett (Guards! Guards!)

"Ever notice how 'What the hell' is always the right answer?"
— Marilyn Monroe

"They say the secret of success is being at the right place at the right time, but since you never know when the right time is going to be, I figure the trick is to find the right place and just hang around."
— Bill Watterson

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."
— James D. Nicoll

"There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating: people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing."
— Oscar Wilde

"There’s a fine a line between support and stalking and let’s all stay on the right side of that."
— Joss Whedon