"We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down."
— Kurt Vonnegut

"Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to remedy anything."
— Kurt Vonnegut

"Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning do to do afterward."
— Kurt Vonnegut

"Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead."
— Kurt Vonnegut

"Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile."
— Kurt Vonnegut

"Love is where you find it. I think it is foolish to go around looking for it, and I think it can be poisonous. I wish people who are conventionally supposed to love each other would say to each other, when they fight, 'Please-a little less love, and a little more common decency."
— Kurt Vonnegut

"Make love when you can. It's good for you."
— Kurt Vonnegut (Mother Night)

"At the same time, you have to find the right distance between people. Too close, and they overwhelm you, too far and they abandon you. How to hold them in the right relation?"
— Hanif Kureishi (Intimacy)

"Without love, most of life remains concealed. Nothing is as fascinating as love, unfortunately."
— Hanif Kureishi (Intimacy)

"Love cannot be measured by its duration..."
— Hanif Kureishi (Intimacy)

"She waited for the train to pass. Then she said, "I sometimes think that people’s hearts are like deep wells. Nobody knows what’s at the bottom. All you can do is imagine by what comes floating to the surface every once in a while."
— Haruki Murakami (Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman)

"In this world, there are things you can only do alone, and things you can only do with somebody else. It's important to combine the two in just the right amount."
— Haruki Murakami

""Letters are just pieces of paper," I said. "Burn them, and what stays in your heart will stay; keep them, and what vanishes will vanish.""
— Haruki Murakami (Norwegian Wood)

"Mediocrity is like a spot on your shirt, it never comes off."
— Haruki Murakami (Dance, Dance, Dance)

"Es una lástima, pero hay cosas que no pueden volver atrás. Una vez has dado un paso hacia delante, por más que lo intentes, ya no puedes retroceder. Si se estropean, así se quedan para siempre."
— Haruki Murakami (South of the Border, West of the Sun)

"Memories are what warm you up from the inside. But they're also what tear you apart."
— Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)

"But who can say what's best? That's why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a life time, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives."
— Haruki Murakami (Norwegian Wood)

"Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who's in love gets sad when they think of their lover. It's like stepping back inside a room you have fond memories of, one you haven't seen in a long time."
— Haruki Murakami

"Chance encounters are what keep us going."
— Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)

"Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional."
— Haruki Murakami

"A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended."
— Ian McEwan (Atonement)

"This is how the entire course of a life can be changed: by doing nothing."
— Ian McEwan (On Chesil Beach)

"you son of a bitch, she said, I am
trying to build a meaningful
relationship.

you can't build it with a hammer,
he said."
— Charles Bukowski (Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit)

""I never met another man I'd rather be. And even if that's a delusion, it's a lucky one.""
— Charles Bukowski

"Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times you've felt that way."
— Charles Bukowski

"this time has finished me."
— Charles Bukowski (Love Is a Dog from Hell: Poems, 1974-1977)

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

"If you hear a voice within you say "you cannot paint," then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced."
— Vincent Van Gogh

"'One never reaches home,' she said. 'But where paths that have an affinity for each other intersect, the whole world looks like home, for a time.'"
— Hermann Hesse (Demian)

"Those who are too lazy and comfortable to think for themselves and be their own judges obey the laws. Others sense their own laws within them."
— Hermann Hesse (Demian)

"'You've never lived what you are thinking, and that isn't good. Only the ideas we actually live are of any value.'"
— Hermann Hesse (Demian)

"I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells."
— Dr. Seuss

"What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?"
— George Eliot

"It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are still alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger for them."
— George Eliot

"The only obsession everyone wants: 'love.' People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think otherwise. I think you're whole before you begin. And the love fractures you. You're whole, and then you're cracked open. "
— Philip Roth (The Dying Animal)

"The pleasure isn't in owning the person. The pleasure is this. Having another contender in the room with you."
— Philip Roth (The Human Stain)

"Because that is when you love somebody - when you see them being game in the face of the worst. Not courageous. Not heroic. Just game."
— Philip Roth (The Human Stain)

"There are no uncontaminated angels"
— Philip Roth

"When you come to the edge of all the light you have known and are about to step into the darkness, faith is knowing one of two things will happen…There will be something to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly."
— Patrick Overton (The leaning tree: [poems])