"Maybe it was true, and being a girl could be about interest rates and skinny jeans, riding bikes and wearing pink. Not about any one thing, but everything."
— Sarah Dessen (Along for the Ride)

""It was so easy to disown what you couldn't recognize, to keep yourself apart from things that were foreign and unsettling. The only person you can be sure to control, always, is yourself. Which is a lot to be sure of, but at the same time, not enough.""
— Sarah Dessen (Along for the Ride)

"A great book is a homing device
For navigating paradise.

A good book somehow makes you care
About the comfort of a chair.

A bad book owes to many trees
A forest of apologies."
— J. Patrick Lewis

"Supposedly nobody outside the group knew there was a group. Of course we all knew that wasn't true. High school was like the little clear plastic tunnels that Paul's hamsters lived in: you could run a long way but never get out, and always, everyone could see you."
— John Barnes (Tales of the Madman Underground: An Historical Romance 1973)

"I realized after I got Jesus, I'd marry "that good woman who put me right with the Lord, got me away from the bottle and taught me what life is really all about." Which was to say, some church girl that resembles a pile of loose fat upholstered with pale goopy skin, and whose whole life is chocolate cake and visiting her sister."
— John Barnes (Tales of the Madman Underground: An Historical Romance 1973)

"I always liked that time of day, when people were shutting up their shops, putting the town to bed for the night, going home to do normal stuff with their normal families. I wonder if they got to enjoy being normal, to know just how terrific it was, or whether it was just invisible to them like air? Sometimes I got so pissed off at how easy the normal people had it that I just wanted to walk down the street shaking them and screaming into their squishy self-satisfied faces."
— John Barnes (Tales of the Madman Underground: An Historical Romance 1973)

"It wasn't that funny, but I laughed. There wouldn't be much laughter in the world if people didn't like each other, because there sure as shit aren't that many good jokes."
— John Barnes (Tales of the Madman Underground: An Historical Romance 1973)

"I know the mall is just a lot of fake plants and fake food and people buying crap for too much money, and at Christmas people pay for their kids to talk to Santa, learning greed the way some kids learn piano. I know all that. I can hear the Muzak, smell the waffle fries. Like everybody else, I walk around stuck inside a cliche, like we're stars of some TV show we plan to watch later, if nothing else is on. But still, there's something hopeful about this place, too, and maybe it takes having a crazy mother to get that. People buy stuff, because they think they are going to need it, because they think their lives are going to keep skipping down the same old path, and I want so much for that to be true for them that it nearly makes me cry. The mall says, Nothing is terrible. The mall says, Life is small and adequate."
— Heather Hepler (Jars Of Glass)

"You can tell all of us are morphing into full-blown adults, wingtip adults, because all the time now the Big Question is, What are you going to do? After the summer, about your scholarship, about choosing a college, after graduation, with the rest of your life. When you are thirteen, the question is, Smooth or crunchy? That's it. Later, at the onset of full-blown adulthood, the Big Question changes a little bit - instead of, What are you going to do? it turns into, What do you do? I hear it all the time when my parents have parties, all the men standing around. After they talk sports, they always ask, What do you do? It's just part of the code that they mean "for a living" because no one ever answers it by saying, I go for walks and listen to music full-blast and don't care about my hearing thirty years from now, and I drink milk out of the carton, and I cough when someone lights up a cigarette, and I dig rainy days because they make me sad in a way I like, and I read books until I fall asleep holding them, and I put on sock-shoe, sock-shoe instead of sock-sock, shoe-shoe because I think it's better luck. Never that. People are always in something. I'm in advertising. I'm in real estate. I'm in sales and marketing. "
— Brad Barkley (Jars Of Glass)

"Finding A Way

I'd like you for a friend.
I'd like to find the way
of asking you to be my friend.
I don't know what to say.

What would you like to hear?
What is it I can do?
There has to be some word, some look
Connecting me to you."
— Myra Cohn Livingston

"Teased

Sometimes
when I'm teased
I don't cry,
I go away.
When I come back
my brother and his friends
are doing something else.
I remember.
They forget."
— Richard J. Margolis

"I Still Have Everything You Gave Me

It is dusty on the edges.

It is slightly rotten.

I guard it without thinking.

I focus on it once a year
when I shake it out in the wind.

I do not ache.

I would not trade."
— Naomi Shihab Nye

"No one knows why we hate Hattie. Maybe it's her wool skirts and kneesocks. Maybe it's because she's the last to develop. Maybe it's because she makes A's. Maybe it's because if we hate her, no one will hate us."
— Lorie Ann Grover (Loose Threads)

"They looked for one another when nothing else was happening, the way you pick up a magazine or look in the cupboard for a snack. Not exactly by accident and not exactly on purpose. You could go out in the world and do new things and meet new people, and then you could come home and just sit on the stoop with someone you had never not known, and watch lightning bugs blink on and off."
— Lynne Rae Perkins (Criss Cross)

"I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends."
— Joan Didion (Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays)

"Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo"
— James Joyce

"Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods' roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine."
— James Joyce

"To his surprise he also discovered that it was possible to be good at what you had little interest in, just as it had been possible to be bad at something, whether painting or poetry, that you cared about a great deal."
— Richard Russo

"After all, what was the whole wide world but a place for people to yearn for their heart's impossible desires, for those desires to become entrenched in defiance of logic, plausibility, and even the passage of time, as eternal as polished marble. "
— Richard Russo (Empire Falls)

"There's a certain class of people who will do you in and then remain completely mystified by the depth of your pain."
— Sue Grafton (E is for Evidence)

"Except for cases that clearly involve a homicidal maniac, the police like to believe murders are committed by those we know and love, and most of the time they're right - a chilling thought when you sit down to dinner with a family of five. All those potential killers passing their plates."
— Sue Grafton (A is for Alibi)

"-'What do ties matter, Jeeves, at a time like this?'
'There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter'"
— P.G. Wodehouse

"There will be all these fifty-year-old women wearing hot pants and squeezing themselves into pretzel shapes and then there will be me. Just reaching for my toes like they're China. 'Hello there! You're so far away, I can't get to you! Can you even hear me?'"
— E. Lockhart (The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks)

"It is better to be alone, she figures, than to be with someone who can't see who you are. It is better to lead than to follow. It is better to speak up than stay silent. It is better to open doors than to shut them on people.

She will not be simple and sweet. She will not be what people tell her to be. That Bunny Rabbit is dead.
"
— E. Lockhart (The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks)

"She might, in fact, go crazy, as has happened to a lot of people who break rules. Not the people who play at rebellion but really only solidify their already dominant positions in society...but those who take some larger action that disrupts the social order. Who try to push through the doors that are usually closed to them. They do sometimes go crazy, these people, because the world is telling them not to want the things they want. It can seem saner to give up--but then one goes insane from giving up."
— E. Lockhart

"...a really good friend, the kind of friend who - when they were together both of them were more able to be who they really were."
— Cynthia Voigt from Orfe

"But I'll tell you something else, too. Something I've learned, the hard way. I guess"—Gram laughed a little—"I'm the kind of person who has to learn things the hard way. You've got to hold on. Hold on to people. They can get away from you. It's not always going to be fun, but if you don't—hold on—then you lose them."
— Cynthia Voigt

"I dont care who kissed you first as long as I kiss you last."
— Rachel Vail (If We Kiss)

"'Doesn't it bother you that people don't get it?'

Pete starts to shake his head then he catches himself and holds still.

'Nope,' he says. 'If you know what you love, it doesn't matter what other people think. Besides, people are challenged when they're uncomfortable.'"
— K.L. Going (King of the Screwups)

"You can't create love, Liam. You just have to take it wherever you find it."
— K.L. Going (King of the Screwups)

"All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be the blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.
"
— J.R.R. Tolkien (The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, Part 1) / یاران حلقه - ارباب حلقه ها، قسمت اول)

"His hand closed automatically around the fake Horcrux but in spite of everything, in spite of the dark and twisting path he saw stretching ahead for himself, in spite of the final meeting with Voldemort he knew must come whether in a month in a year or in ten, he felt his heart lift at the thought that there was still one last golden day of peace left to enjoy with Ron and Hermione. "
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince)

"It is our choices that show us what we truly are, far more than our abilities."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets)

"Uncle Vernon: What were you doing under our window, boy?
Harry Potter: Listening to the news.
Uncle Vernon: Listening to the news! Again?
Harry: Well, it changes every day, you see."
— Harry and Uncle Vernon

"Why are they all staring?" demanded Albus as he and Rose craned around to look at the other students.

"Don’t let it worry you," said Ron. "It’s me. I’m extremely famous.""
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows)

"'Does it hurt?"' The childish question had escaped Harry's lips before he could stop it.

'Dying? Not at all,' said Sirius. 'Quicker and easier than falling asleep.'"
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows)

"You know, Minister, I disagree with Dumbledore on many counts...but you cannot deny he's got style..."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix)

"We'll be there Harry," said Ron
"What?"
"At your Aunt's and Uncle's house," said Ron, "And then we'll go with you wherever you're going."
"No-" said Harry quickly; he hadn't counted on this, he had meant them to understand that he was undertaking the most dangerous journey alone.
"You said it once before," said Hermione quickly, "that there was time to turn back if we wanted to. We've had time, haven't we? We're with you whatever happens."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince)

"You could say sorry," suggested Harry bluntly.
"What, and get attacked by another flock of canaries?" muttered Ron.
"What did you have to imitate her for?"
"She laughed at my mustache!"
"So did I, it was the stupidest thing I've ever seen."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince)

"Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows)

"Not my Daughter, you Bitch!"
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows)

"Do you remember me telling you we are practicing non-verbal spells, Potter?"
"Yes," said Harry stiffly.
"Yes, sir."
"There's no need to call me "sir" Professor."
The words had escaped him before he knew what he was saying."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince)

"You should write a book," Ron told Hermione as he cut up his potatoes, "translating mad things girls do so boys can understand them."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix)

"“I’ve been thinking,” he said. “Which is not an easy thing for a teacher to admit to.”"
— John Barnes (Tales of the Madman Underground: An Historical Romance 1973)

"I hate those endless descriptions of a heroine's physical attributes . . . it really bothers me how in books it seems like the only two choices are perfection or self-hatred. As if readers will only like a character who's ideal--or completely shattered."
— E. Lockhart (The Boyfriend List: 15 Guys, 11 Shrink Appointments, 4 Ceramic Frogs and Me, Ruby Oliver)

"That was how it always was with Colleen: No matter how sad she felt, there was always this little bit of hope - like a speck of glitter caught in your eyelash - that never went away, no matter what."
— Lauren Tarshis (Emma Jean Lazarus Fell in Love)

"She said she usually cried at least once each day not because she was sad, but because the world was so beautiful & life was so short."
— Brian Andreas

"You're the strangest person I ever met, she said & I said you too & we decided we'd know each other a long time. "
— Brian Andreas

"I was waiting for the longest time, she said. I thought you forgot.

It is hard to forget, I said, when there is such an empty space when you are gone."
— Brian Andreas (Story People)

""You may not remember the time you let me go first.
Or the time you dropped back to tell me it wasn't that far to go.
Or the time you waited at the crossroads for me to catch up.
You may not remember any of those, but I do and this is what I have to say to you:

Today, no matter what it takes,
we ride home together." "
— Brian Andreas (Traveling Light: Stories & Drawings for a Quiet Mind)