"...you got to want it to be good, and I don't want it."
— Truman Capote (Breakfast at Tiffany's)

"You'd think a man that had waited eighty some odd years on God to come into his life, well, you'd think he'd come. If he didnt you'd still have to figure that he knew what he was doin. I don't know what other description of God you could have. So what you end up with is that those he has spoke to are the ones that must of needed it the worst. That's not a easy thing to accept."
— Cormac McCarthy (The Road)

"It's not about knowing who you are. It's about thinkin you got there without takin anything with you. Your notions about startin over. or anybody's. You dont start over. That's what it's about. Every step you take is forever. You can't make it go away. None of it."
— Cormac McCarthy (No Country for Old Men)

"People complain about the bad things that happen to em that they don't deserve but they seldom mention the good. About what they done to deserve them things"
— Cormac McCarthy (No Country for Old Men)

"People don't pay attention. And then one day there's an accounting. And after that, nothing is the same."
— Cormac McCarthy (No Country for Old Men)

"Everybody has to feel superior to somebody," she said. "But it's customary to present a little proof before you take the privilege."
— Truman Capote (Breakfast at Tiffany's)

"'Americans,'" he said, quoting his wife's letter to the Times, "'are forever searching for love in forms it never takes, in places it can never be. It must have something to do with the vanished frontier.'" "
— Kurt Vonnegut (Cat's Cradle)

"I still maintain that an ordinary human being has the right to be horrified by a mangled body seen on an afternoon walk."
— Timothy Findley (The Wars)

"He said that in a way being loved is like being told you never have to die."
— Timothy Findley (The Wars)

"Everyone is happier if they have someone else to look down on, as well as someone to look up to, especially if they resent both."
— Christopher Moore (A Dirty Job)

"What you people who weren't yet born can never know is what it meant to sleep in cities under silent falls of snow when all night long the only sounds you heard were dogs that parked at trains that passed so far away they took a short cut through your dreams and no one even woke. It was the war that changed that. It was. After the Great War for Civilization - sleep was different everywhere..."
— Timothy Findley (The Wars)

"Most of us don't live our lives with one, integrated self that meets the world, we're a whole bunch of selves. "
— Christopher Moore (A Dirty Job)

"Christ, back in Chicago, we don't make bicycles any more. It's all human relations now. The eggheads sit around trying to figure out new ways for everybody to be happy. Nobody can get fired, no matter what; and if someone does accidentally make a bicycle, the union accuses us of cruel and inhuman practices and the government confiscates the bicycle for back taxes and gives it to a blind man in Afghanistan."
— Kurt Vonnegut (Cat's Cradle)

"Tiger got to hunt,
Bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder, "Why, why, why?"
Tiger got to sleep,
Bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand."
— Kurt Vonnegut (Cat's Cradle)

"'Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before,' Bokonon tells us. 'He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.'"
— Kurt Vonnegut (Cat's Cradle)

"What makes you think a writer isn't a drug salesman? (153)"
— Kurt Vonnegut (Cat's Cradle)

"Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"I must learn to be content with being happier than I deserve."
— Jane Austen

"I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"The more I see of the world, the more I am dissatisfied with it."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"You deserve a longer letter than this; but it is my unhappy fate seldom to treat people so well as they deserve."
— Jane Austen

"Those who do not complain are never pitied. (Chapter 20)"
— Jane Austen (Pride & Prejudice)

"No young lady can be justified in falling in love before the gentleman's love is declared, it must be very improper that a young lady should dream of a gentleman before the gentleman is first known to have dreamt of her."
— Jane Austen

"You can only have two motives, and I would interfere with either of them. Either you are in each other's confidence and have secret affairs to discuss, or you are conscious that your figures appear to the best advantage by walking. If the first, I should get in your way; if the second, I can admire you much better from here."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"I have been used to consider poetry as the food of love, said Darcy. Of a fine, stout helathy love it may. Every thing nourishes what is strong already. But if it be only a slight inclination, I am convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away. -Elizabeth Bennett"
— Jane Austen

""And your defect is a propensity to hate everybody."
"And yours," he replied with a smile, "is willfully to misunderstand them.""
— Jane Austen

"I cannot comprehend the neglect of a family library in such days as these.
- Mr. Darcy"
— Jane Austen (Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Persuasion)

""There's terrible evil in the world."

"It comes from men," said Holly. "All other elil do what they have to do and Frith moves them as he moves us. They live on the earth and they need food. Men will never rest till they've spoiled the earth and destroyed the animals.""
— Richard Adams (Watership Down: A Novel)

"At that moment, in the sunset on Watership Down, there was offered to General Woundwort the opportunity to show whether he was really the leader of vision and genius which he believed himself to be, or whether he was no more than a tyrant with the courage and cunning of a pirate. For one beat of his pulse the lame rabbit's idea shone clearly before him. He grasped it and realized what it meant. The next, he had pushed it away from him."
— Richard Adams (Watership Down: A Novel)

""Sooner or later, everyone has to meet his match.""
— Richard Adams

"Don't let the bastards grind you down."
— Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid's Tale)

"I hadn't been out to the hives before, so to start off she gave me a lesson in what she called 'bee yard etiquette'. She reminded me that the world was really one bee yard, and the same rules work fine in both places. Don't be afraid, as no life-loving bee wants to sting you. Still, don't be an idiot; wear long sleeves and pants. Don't swat. Don't even think about swatting. If you feel angry, whistle. Anger agitates while whistling melts a bee's temper. Act like you know what you're doing, even if you don't. Above all, send the bees love. Every little thing wants to be loved."
— Sue Monk Kidd

"...some things don't matter much. Like the color of a house. How big is that in the overall scheme of life? But lifting a person's heart--now, that matters. The whole problem with people is...they know what matters, but they don't choose it...The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)

"After you get stung, you can't get unstung
no matter how much you whine about it."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)

"The whole problem with people is--The problem is they KNOW what matters, but they don't CHOOSE it...The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)

"If you need something from somebody always give that person a way to hand it to you."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect."
— Franz Kafka (The Metamorphosis)

"Books are a narcotic."
— Franz Kafka

"If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us."
— Hermann Hesse

"People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest."
— Hermann Hesse

"Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness."
— Hermann Hesse (Siddhartha)

"What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find."
— Hermann Hesse (Siddhartha)

"I shall no longer be instructed by the Yoga Veda or the Aharva Veda, or the ascetics, or any other doctrine whatsoever. I shall learn from myself, be a pupil of myself; I shall get to know myself, the mystery of Siddhartha." He looked around as if he were seeing the world for the first time."
— Hermann Hesse (Siddhartha)

"Three things can not hide for long: the Moon, the Sun and the Truth.
- Siddhartha Gautama"
— Hermann Hesse (Siddhartha)

"Within Siddhartha there slowly grew and ripened the knowledge of what wisdom really was and the goal of his long seeking. It was nothing but a preparation of the soul, a capacity, a secret art of thinking, feeling and breathing thoughts of unity at every moment of life."
— Hermann Hesse (Siddhartha)

"Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it. "
— Hermann Hesse

"It may be important to great thinkers to examine the world, to explain and despise it. But I think it is only important to love the world, not to despise it, not for us to hate each other, but to be able to regard the world and ourselves and all beings with love, admiration and respect."
— Hermann Hesse (Siddhartha)

"Perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all one's life."
— Kate Chopin (The Awakening, and Selected Stories)

"The past was nothing to her; offered no lesson which she was willing to heed. The future was a mystery which she never attempted to penetrate. The present alone was significant."
— Kate Chopin

"Life can be long or short, it all depends on how you choose to live it. it's like forever, always changing. for any of us our forever could end in an hour, or a hundred years from now. you can never know for sure, so you'd better make every second count. what you have to decide is how you want your life to be. if your forever was ending tomorrow, is this how you'd want to have spent it?"
— Sarah Dessen (The Truth About Forever)