"And so the lion fell in love with the lamb...," He murmured.
"What a stupid lamb, " I sighed.
"What a sick, masochistic lion."
— Stephenie Meyer

"All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring."
— Chuck Palahniuk

"We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will."
— Chuck Palahniuk

"It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything. "
— Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)

"I don't want to die without any scars."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)

"At the time, my life just seemed too complete, and maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)

"This is your life and its ending one moment at a time."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)

"What I want is to be needed. What I need is to be indispensable to somebody. Who I need is somebody that will eat up all my free time, my ego, my attention. Somebody addicted to me. A mutual addiction."
— Chuck Palahniuk

"When did the future switch from being a promise to being a threat?"
— Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)

"If you love something set it free, but don't be surprised if it comes back with herpes."
— Chuck Palahniuk

"I am Jack's complete lack of surprise. I am Jack's Broken Heart."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)

"We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)

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

"It's like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story."
— Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)

"If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking."
— 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

"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)

"Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?"
— Haruki Murakami (Sputnik Sweetheart)

"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)

"There's no such thing as perfect writing, just like there's no such thing as perfect despair."
— Haruki Murakami (Hear the Wind Sing)

"There is a legend about a bird which sings just once in its life, more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. From the moment it leaves the nest it searches for a thorn tree, and does not rest until it has found one. Then, singing among the savage branches, it impales itself upon the longest, sharpest spine. And, dying, it rises above its own agony to outcarol the lark and the nightingale. One superlative song, existence the price. But the whole world stills to listen, and God in His heaven smiles. For the best is only bought at the cost of great pain… Or so says the legend."
— Colleen McCullough (The Thorn Birds)

"When we press the thorn to our chest we know, we understand, and still we do it."
— Colleen McCullough (The Thorn Birds)

""Love and hate are cruel, only liking is kind""
— Colleen McCullough (Caesar's Women)