"We should regret our mistakes and learn from them, but never carry them forward into the future with us."
— L.M. Montgomery

"Perhaps, after all, romance did not come into one’s life with pomp and blare, like a gay knight riding down; perhaps it crept to one’s side like an old friend through quiet ways; perhaps it revealed itself in seeming prose, until some sudden shaft of illumination flung athwart its pages betrayed the rhythm and the music; perhaps . . . perhaps . . . love unfolded naturally out of a beautiful friendship, as a golden-hearted rose slipping from its green sheath."
— L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Avonlea)

"All the books we own, both read and unread, are the fullest expression of self we have at our disposal. ... But with each passing year, and with each whimsical purchase, our libraries become more and more able to articulate who we are, whether we read the books or not."
— Nick Hornby

"Get busy living or get busy dying."
— Stephen King (Shawshank Redemption)

"Fiction is the truth inside the lie."
— Stephen King

"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."
— Stephen King (The Gunslinger)

"If you liked being a teenager, there's something really wrong with you."
— Stephen King

"Humor is almost always anger with its make-up on."
— Stephen King (Bag of Bones)

"The thing under my bed waiting to grab my ankle isn't real. I know that, and I also know that if I'm careful to keep my foot under the covers, it will never be able to grab my ankle."
— Stephen King (Night Shift)

"The scariest moment is always just before you start."
— Stephen King (On Writing)

"I think that we're all mentally ill. Those of us outside the asylums only hide it a little better - and maybe not all that much better after all."
— Stephen King

"If you write books, you go on one page at a time. We turn from all we know and all we fear. We study catalogues, watch football games, choose Sprint over AT&T. We count the birds in the sky and will not turn from the window when we hear the footsteps behind as something comes up the hall; we say yes, I agree that clouds often look like other things - fish and unicorns and men on horseback - but they are really only clouds. Even when the lightning flashes inside them we say they are only clouds and turn our attention to the next meal, the next pain, the next breath, the next page.
This is how we go on."
— Stephen King

"[A] tragedy is a tragedy, and at the bottom, all tragedies are stupid. Give me a choice and I'll take A Midsummer Night's Dream over Hamlet every time. Any fool with steady hands and a working set of lungs can build up a house of cards and then blow it down, but it takes a genius to make people laugh."
— Stephen King

"...you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will."
— Stephen King (On Writing)

"You are the grim, goal-oriented ones who will not believe that the joy is in the journey rather than the destination no matter how many times it has been proven to you."
— Stephen King

"“…It’s not that you don’t have the capacity to accept the truth. You don’t want to accept it, and you hide behind your own logic and intelligence while the truth marches by. Step out and join it, for goodness’’ sake! Shout it out in full step! I believe!”"
— Ted Dekker (Saint)

"Never leave a friend behind. Friends are all we have to get us through this life--and they are the only things from this world that we could hope to see in the next."
— Dean Koontz (Fear Nothing)

"Not one day in anyone’s life is an uneventful day, no day without profound meaning, no matter how dull and boring it might seem, no matter whether you are a seamstress or a queen, a shoeshine boy, or a movie star, a renowned philosopher or a Down’s-syndrome child. Because in every day of your life, there are opportunities to perform little kindnesses for others, both by conscious acts of will and unconscious example. Each smallest act of kindness—even just words of hope when they are needed, the remembrance of a birthday, a compliment that engenders a smile—reverberates across great distances and spans of time, affecting lives unknown to the one whose generous spirit was the source of this good echo, because kindness is passed on and grows each time it’s passed, until a simple courtesy becomes an act of selfless courage years later and far away. Likewise, each small meanness, each thoughtless expression of hatred, each envious and bitter act, regardless of how petty, can inspire others, and is therefore the seed that ultimately produces evil fruit, poisoning people whom you have never met and never will. All human lives are so profoundly and intricately entwined—those dead, those living, those generations yet to come—that the fate of all is the fate of each, and the hope of humanity rests in every heart and in every pair of hands. Therefore, after every failure, we are obliged to strive again for success, and when faced with the end of one thing, we must build something new and better in the ashes, just as from pain and grief, we must weave hope, for each of us is a thread critical to the strength—to the very survival of the human tapestry. Every hour in every life contains such often-unrecognized potential to affect the world that the great days and thrilling possibilities are combined always in this momentous day."
— Dean Koontz (From the Corner of His Eye)

"We have a responsibility to stand watch over one another, we are watchers, all of us, watchers, guarding against the darkness."
— Dean Koontz

"If we were always conscious of the fact that people precious to us are frighteningly mortal, hanging not even by a thread, but by a wisp of gossamer, perhaps we would be kinder to them and more grateful for the love and friendship they give to us."
— Dean Koontz (Seize the Night)

"Given my heritage and the ordeal of my childhood, I sometimes wonder why I myself am not insane. Maybe I am."
— Dean Koontz (Odd Thomas)

"Life, Stormy says, is not about how fast you run or even with what degree of grace. It's about perseverance, about staying on your feet and slogging forward no matter what."
— Dean Koontz

"We are not strangers to ourselves, we only try to be."
— Dean Koontz (Odd Thomas)

"If one's friends do not openly laugh at him, they are not in fact his friends. "
— Dean Koontz (Forever Odd)

"Change isn't eaisy.Changing the way you live means changing the way you think, means changing what you believe about life. That's hard."
— Dean Koontz (One Door Away from Heaven)

"In self-defense and in defense of the innocent, cowardice is the only sin."
— Dean Koontz

"Do as little harm to others as you can; make any sacrifice for your true friends; be responsible for yourself and ask nothing of others; and grab all the fun you can. Don't give much thought to yesterday, don't worry about tomorrow, live in the moment, and trust that your existence has meaning even when the world seems to be all blind chance and chaos. When life lands a hammer blow in your face, do your best to respond to the hammer as if it had been a cream pie."
— Dean Koontz

"If you don't go after what you want, you'll never have it. If you don't ask, the answer is always no. If you don't step forward, you're always in the same place."
— Nora Roberts

"Pg. 48

"He was a wild one as a lad, and there's a look about him that says he could be again." Kathy sighed. "I've always had a soft spot for a wild heart in a man. Have you no sweetheart in the States then, Jude?"

"No." She thought briefly of William. Had she ever considered her husband her sweetheart? "No one special."

"If they're not special, what would the point be?"
— Nora Roberts (Jewels of the Sun)

"You spend your life getting walked on, you learn to recognize the tread."
— Nora Roberts

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."
— Dr. Seuss

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

"You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams."
— Dr. Seuss

"You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go..."
— Dr. Seuss

"A person's a person, no matter how small."
— Dr. Seuss

"Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple."
— Dr. Seuss

"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
Nothing is going to get better. It's not."
— Dr. Seuss (The Lorax)

"Being crazy isn't enough."
— Dr. Seuss

"I have heard there are troubles of more than one kind. Some come from ahead and some come from behind. But I've bought a big bat. I'm all ready you see. Now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!"
— Dr. Seuss

"If things start happening, don't worry, don't stew, just go right along and you'll start happening too."
— Dr. Seuss

"Adults are just obsolete children and the hell with them."
— Dr. Seuss

"If you never did you should. These things are fun and fun is good."
— Dr. Seuss

"I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees. I speak for the trees for the trees have no tongues."
— Dr. Seuss (The Lorax)

"And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled 'till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store. What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more. "
— Dr. Seuss

"I know, up on top you are seeing great sights, but down here at the bottom we, too, should have rights."
— Dr. Seuss (Yertle the Turtle and Gertrude McFuzz)

"All those Nupboards in the Cupboards theey're good fun to have about. But that Nooth gush on my tooth brush.....Him I could do without."
— Dr. Seuss (There's a Wocket in My Pocket)

"You'll get mixed up, of course, as you already know. You'll get mixed up with many strange birds as you go. So be sure when you step. Step with care and great tact and remember that Life's a Great Balancing Act. Just never forget to be dexterous and deft. And never mix up your right foot with your left."
— Dr. Seuss (Oh, the Places You'll Go!)

"The storm starts, when the drops start dropping
When the drops stop dropping then the storm starts stopping."
— Dr. Seuss

"In my world, everyone's a pony and they all eat rainbows and poop butterflies!"
— Dr. Seuss

"Inconceivable!"
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
— William Goldman (The Princess Bride)