"In the course of a lifetime, waht does it matter?"
— Sharon Creech from "Walk Two Moons"

"Maybe it was the same with people: if you studied them,you'd see new and different things. But would you like what you saw? Did it depend on who was doing the looking?"
— Sharon Creech (Chasing Redbird)

""Don't judge a man until you've walked two moons in his moccasins." "
— Sharon Creech (Walk Two Moons)

"Sometimes you know in your heart you love someone, but you have to go away before your head can figure it out."
— Sharon Creech (Walk Two Moons)

"There are some things, after all, that Sally Owens knows for sure certain: Always throw spilled salt over your left shoulder. Keep rosemary by your garden gate. Add pepper to your mashed potatoes. Plant roses and lavender, for luck. Fall in love whenever you can."
— Alice Hoffman (Practical Magic)

"Here's the thing about luck...you don't know if it's good or bad until you have some perspective."
— Alice Hoffman (Local Girls)

"People hide their truest nature. I understood that; I even applauded it. What sort of world would it be if people bled all over the sidewalks, if they wept under trees, smacked whomever they despised, kissed strangers, revealed themselves?"
— Alice Hoffman (The Ice Queen)

"You build your world around someone, and then what happens when he disappears? Where do you go- into pieces, into atoms, into the arms of another man? You go shopping, you cook dinner, you work odd hours, you make love to someone else on June nights. But you're not really there, you're someplace else where there is blue sky and a road you don't recognize. If you squint your eyes, you think you see him, in the shadows, beyond the trees. You always imagine that you see him, but he's never there. It's only his spirit, that's what's there beneath the bed when you kiss your husband, there when you send your daughter off to school. It's in your coffee cup, your bathwater, your tears. Unfinished business always comes back to haunt you, and a man who swears he'll love you forever isn't finished with you until he's done."
— Alice Hoffman (Here on Earth)

"It doesn't matter what people tell you. It doesn't matter what they might say. Sometimes you have to leave home. Sometimes, running away means you're headed in the exact right direction."
— Alice Hoffman (Practical Magic)

"There are a lot of children in Afghanistan, but little childhood."
— Khaled Hosseini (The Kite Runner)

"A man who has no conscience, no goodness, does not suffer."
— Khaled Hosseini (The Kite Runner)

"For you, a thousand times over

Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini"
— Khaled Hosseini (The Kite Runner)

"...but better to be hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie."
— Khaled Hosseini (The Kite Runner)

"But what are our stories if not the mirrors we hold up to our fears?"
— Wally Lamb (I Know This Much Is True)

"Take what people give you. Drink their milkshakes."
— Wally Lamb (I Know This Much Is True)

"Religion's just a well-oiled profit-driven denial of the randomness of it all."
— Wally Lamb

"I don't know. Maybe we're all chaos theorists. Lovers of pattern and predictability, we're scared shitless of explosive change. But we're fascinated by it, too. Drawn to it. Travelers tap their brakes to ogle the mutilation and mangled metal on the side of the interstate, and the traffic backs up for miles. Hijacked planes crash into skyscrapers, breached levees drown a city, and CNN and the networks rush to the scene so that we can all sit in front of our TVs and feast on the footage. Stare, stunned, at the pandemonium--the devils let loose from their cages."
— Wally Lamb (The Hour I First Believed: A Novel)

"Love is like breathing, you take it in and let it out."
— Wally Lamb (She's Come Undone)

"I am not a smart man, particularly, but one day, at long last, I stumbled from the dark woods of my own, and my family's, and my country's past, holding in my hands these truths: that love grows from the rich loam of forgiveness; that mongrels make good dogs; that the evidence of God exists in the roundness of things. This much, at least, I've figured out. I know this much is true."
— Wally Lamb (I Know This Much Is True)

"Trouble is a part of your life, and if you don't share it, you don't give the person who loves you a chance to love you enough."
— Dinah Shore

"Life's got to be lived, no matter how long or short. You got to take what comes."
— Mae Tuck, from Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt

"The grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for."
— Allan K. Chalmers

"The happiest people are those who think the most interesting thoughts. Those who decide to use leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music, good books, good pictures, good company, good conversation, are the happiest people in the world. And they are not only happy in themselves, they are the cause of happiness in others.
"
— William Lyon Phelps

"It isn't what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it."
— Dale Carnegie (How to Win Friends & Influence People)

"The happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story."
— Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn)

"One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny, and is likely to interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways."
— Bertrand Russell

"The real things haven't changed. It is still best to be honest and truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with simple pleasures; and have courage when things go wrong."
— Laura Ingalls Wilder

"Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy."
— Guillaume Apollinaire

"I told you I'm not going anywhere. Don't be afraid. As long as it makes you happy, I'll be here."
— Stephenie Meyer

"'Soul mates' are fiction and an illusion; and while every young man and young woman will seek with all diligence and prayerfulness to find a mate with whom life can be most compatible and beautiful, yet it is certain that almost any good man and any good woman can have happiness and a successful marriage if both are willing to pay the price."
— Spencer W. Kimball

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
— Mark Twain

"If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you."
— A.A. Milne (Winnie-the-Pooh)

"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everyone."
— Bill Cosby

"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."
— Mark Twain

"It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone)

"The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go."
— Dr. Seuss

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

"Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban)

"Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right."
— Henry Ford

"You cannot find peace by avoiding life."
— Virginia Woolf

"A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
enough money within her control to move out
and rent a place of her own even if she never wants
to or needs to...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
something perfect to wear if the employer or date of her
dreams wants to see her in an hour...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ...
a youth she's content to leave behind....
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
a past juicy enough that she's looking forward to
retelling it in her old age....
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE .....
a set of screwdrivers, a cordless drill, and a black
lace bra...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
one friend who always makes her laugh... and one who
lets her cry...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
a good piece of furniture not previously owned by anyone
else in her family...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
eight matching plates, wine glasses with stems, and a
recipe for a meal that will make her guests feel honored...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
a feeling of control over her destiny...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
how to fall in love without losing herself..
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
HOW TO QUIT A JOB,
BREAK UP WITH A LOVER,
AND CONFRONT A FRIEND WITHOUT RUINING THE FRIENDSHIP...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
when to try harder... and WHEN TO WALK AWAY...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
that she can't change the length of her calves,
the width of her hips, or the nature of her parents..
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
that her childhood may not have been perfect...but it's over...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
what she would and wouldn't do for love or more...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
how to live alone... even if she doesn't like it...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
whom she can trust,
whom she can't,
and why she shouldn't
take it personally...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
where to go...
be it to her best friend's kitchen table...
or a charming inn in the woods...
when her soul needs soothing...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
what she can and can't accomplish in a day...
a month...and a year..."
— Pamela Redmond Satran

"Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings."
— Anaïs Nin