"Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they’ll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back."
— John Green (An Abundance of Katherines)

"What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person."
— John Green (Paper Towns)

"If only we could see the endless string of consequences that result from our smallest actions. But we can’t know better until knowing better is useless."
— John Green

"Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia. (...) You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present."
— John Green (Looking for Alaska)

"When adults say, "Teenagers think they are invincible" with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail."
— John Green (Looking for Alaska)

"So, I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even if we don't have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose wherever we go from there. We can still do things. And we can try to feel okay about them..."
— Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)

"I walk around the school hallways and look at the people. I look at the teachers and wonder why they're here. If they like their jobs. Or us. And I wonder how smart they were when they were fifteen. Not in a mean way. In a curious way. It's like looking at all the students and wondering who's had their heart broken that day, and how they are able to cope with having three quizzes and a book report due on top of that. Or wondering who did the heart breaking. And wondering why."
— Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)

"I am very interested and fascinated how everyone loves each other, but no one really likes each other."
— Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)

"When you were young, and your heart, was an open book. You used to say, live and let live."
— Paul McCartney

"Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live."
— Mark Twain

"Our lives are not as limited as we think they are; the world is a wonderfully weird place; consensual reality is significantly flawed; no institution can be trusted, but love does work; all things are possible; and we all could be happy and fulfilled if we only had the guts to be truly free and the wisdom to shrink our egos and quit taking ourselves so damn seriously."
— Tom Robbins

"I've got nothing to do today but smile."
— Simon and Garfunkel

"May God bless and keep you always,
May your wishes all come true,
May you always do for others
And let others do for you.
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung,
May you stay forever young,"
— Bob Dylan

"Sundown, yellow moon, I replay the past
I know every scene by heart, they all went by so fast"
— Bob Dylan

"You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life."
— Albert Camus

"I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till i drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion."
— Jack Kerouac

"One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple."
— Jack Kerouac (The Dharma Bums)

"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see."
— Henry David Thoreau

"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

"Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring."
— Marilyn Monroe (Marilyn: Her Life in Her Own Words)

"If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to."
— Dorothy Parker

"Constant use had not worn ragged the fabric of their friendship."
— Dorothy Parker

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
— Oscar Wilde (Lady Windermere's Fan)

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."
— Oscar Wilde

"Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught."
— Oscar Wilde

"The very essence of romance is uncertainty."
— Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays)

"I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them."
— Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

"There’s no such thing as ready,” she says. “There’s only willing."
— Rachel Cohn and David Levithan (Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist)

"The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death."
— Oscar Wilde

"There are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely-or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands."
— Oscar Wilde (Lady Windermere's Fan)

"Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the cave-man had known how to laugh, History would have been different."
— Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

"If I have to be alone I want to be by myself."
— Arthur Miller

"Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets."
— Arthur Miller

"Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!"
— Arthur Miller (The Crucible)

"The very impulse to write springs from an inner chaos crying for order - for meaning."
— Arthur Miller

"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world."
— Anne Frank

"TO BE HOPEFUL in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."
— Howard Zinn

"I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic is keeping one's head pointed toward the sun, one's feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death."
— Nelson Mandela (Long Walk to Freedom: Autobiography of Nelson Mandela)

"My optimism wears heavy boots and is loud."
— Henry Rollins

"Relax. They're not going to kill us. They're going to TRY and kill us. And that is a very different thing."
— Steve Voake (The Dreamwalker's Child)