"Once, in my father's bookshop, I heard a regular customer say that few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later—no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover, or how much we learn or forget—we will return."
— Carlos Ruiz Zafón (The Shadow of the Wind)

"Bea says that the art of reading is slowly dying, that it's an intimate ritual, that a book is a mirror that offers us only what we already carry inside us, that when we read, we do it with all our heart and mind, and great readers are becoming more scarce by the day."
— Carlos Ruiz Zafón (The Shadow of the Wind)

"If you really want to possess a woman, you must think like her, and the first thing to do is win over her soul. The rest, that sweet, soft wrapping that steals away your senses and your virtue, is a bonus."
— Carlos Ruiz Zafón (The Shadow of the Wind)

"One of the pitfalls of childhood is that one doesn't have to understand something to feel it. By the time the mind is able to comprehend what has happened, the wounds of the beart are already too deep."
— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

"HAPPINESS [is] ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED"
— Jon Krakauer (Into the Wild)

"You are wrong if you think Joy emanates only...from human relationships. God has placed it all around us...and all you have to do is reach for it."
— Jon Krakauer (Into the Wild)

"When a young person is moved by a passion and feels compelled to go on this sort of quest, I think you have to let him. You can't stop him. In our culture we don't have formal rights of passage like in some ancient cultures. Subjecting yourself to risk... may be something you have to go through to be a man or a woman."
— Jon Krakauer

"I'm going to paraphrase Thoreau here... rather than love, than money, than faith, than fame, than fairness... give me truth. "
— Jon Krakauer (Into the Wild)

"Never forget that once upon a time, in an unguarded moment, you recognized yourself as a friend."
— Elizabeth Gilbert

"There is so much about my fate that I cannot control, but other things do fall under the jurisdiction. I can decide how I spend my time, whom I interact with, whom I share my body and life and money and energy with. I can select what I can read and eat and study. I can choose how I'm going to regard unfortunate circumstances in my life-whether I will see them as curses or opportunities. I can choose my words and the tone of voice in which I speak to others. And most of all, I can choose my thoughts."
— Elizabeth Gilbert