"But criticism, for the most part, comes from the opposite place that book-enjoying should come from. To enjoy art one needs time, patience, and a generous heart, and criticism is done, by and large, by impatient people who have axes to grind. The worst sort of critics are (analogy coming) butterfly collectors - they chase something, ostensibly out of their search for beauty, then, once they get close, they catch that beautiful something, they kill it, they stick a pin through its abdomen, dissect it and label it. The whole process, I find, is not a happy or healthy one. Someone with his or her own shit figured out, without any emotional problems or bitterness or envy, instead of killing that which he loves, will simply let the goddamn butterfly fly, and instead of capturing and killing it and sticking it in a box, will simply point to it - "Hey everyone, look at that beautiful thing" - hoping everyone else will see the beautiful thing he has seen. Just as no one wants to grow up to be an IRS agent, no one should want to grow up to maliciously dissect books. "
— Dave Eggers

"I can wade Grief --
Whole Pools of it --
I'm used to that --
But the least push of Joy
Breaks up my feet --
And I tip -- drunken --
Let no Pebble -- smile --
'Twas the New Liquor --
That was all!"
— Emily Dickinson (Final Harvest: Poems)

"Judge tenderly of me."
— Emily Dickinson

"Faith is a fine invention
When gentlemen can see,
But microscopes are prudent
In an emergency."
— Emily Dickinson

""Even the smallest person can change the course of the future" "
— Galadriel (Lord of the Rings)

"You save yourself or you remain unsaved."
— Alice Sebold

"'You look invincible,' my mother said one night.
I loved these times, when we seemed to feel the same thing. I turned to her, wrapped in my thin gown, and said:
'I am.'"
— Alice Sebold (The Lovely Bones)

"When I was five I learned to read. Books were a miracle to me - white pages, black ink, and new worlds and different friends in each one. To this day, I relish the feeling of cracking a binding for the first time, the anticipation of where I'll go and whom I'll meet inside."
— Jennifer Weiner (Good in Bed)

"I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time."
— Jack London

"Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born."
— Anaïs Nin

"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

"I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naïve or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman."
— Anaïs Nin

"We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect."
— Anaïs Nin

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage."
— Anaïs Nin

"Luxury is not a necessity to me, but beautiful and good things are."
— Anaïs Nin