"book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. it is not a hobby. those who do it must do it. those who do not do it, think of it as a cousin of stamp collecting, a sister of the trophy cabinet, bastard of a sound bank account and a weak mind."
— Jeanette Winterson

"the buddhists say there are 149 ways to god. i'm not looking for god, only for myself, and that is far more complicated. "
— jeanette winterson (sexing the cherry)

"" Live. And Live Well.

BREATHE. Breathe in and Breathe deeply.

Be PRESENT. Do
not be past. Do not be future. Be now.

On a crystal clear, breezy 70 degree day,
roll down the windows and

FEEL the wind against your skin. Feel the warmth of
the sun.

If you run, then allow those first few breaths on a cool Autumn day to

FREEZE your lungs and do not just be alarmed, be ALIVE.

Get knee-deep in a novel
and LOSE track of time.

If you bike, pedal HARDER and if you crash then crash
well.

Feel the SATISFACTION of a job well done-a paper well-written, a project
thoroughly completed, a play well-performed.

If you must wipe the snot from your
3-year old's nose, don't be disgusted if the Kleenex didn't catch it all

because soon he'll be wiping his own.

If you've recently experienced loss, then
GRIEVE. And Grieve well.

At the table with friends and family, LAUGH.

If you're
eating and laughing at the same time, then might as well laugh until you puke.

And if you eat, then SMELL.

The aromas are not impediments to your day. Steak on
the grill, coffee beans freshly ground, cookies in the oven.

And TASTE.

Taste every ounce of flavor.

Taste every ounce of friendship.

Taste every ounce of Life.

Because-it-is-most-definitely-a-Gift.""
— Kyle Lake

"Sometimes I think that all anyone needs in life is lots of popcorn and a few Lovelies"
— Sam Savage

"I always think everything is going to last forever, but nothing ever does. In fact nothing exists longer than an instant except the thing that we hold in memory"
— Sam Savage (Firmin)

"You are afraid of it because it is stronger than you; you hate it because you are afraid of it; you love it because you cannot subdue it to your will. Only the unsubduable can be loved."
— Yevgeny Zamyatin (We)

"...Those two, in paradise, were given a choice: happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness. There was no third alternative..."
— Yevgeny Zamyatin (We)

"This is the biggest mistake I could think would save me. I wanted to give up the idea that I had any control. Shake things up. To be saved by chaos. To see if I could cope, I wanted to force myself to grow again. To explode my comfort zone."
— Chuck Palahniuk

"...beauty is power the same way money is power the same way a gun is power."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)

"Because nothing is as good as you can imagine it. No one is as beautiful as she is in your head. Nothing is as exciting as your fantasy."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Asfixia / Choke)

"The things you own end up owning you. It's only after you lose everything that you're free to do anything. "
— Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club: A Novel)

"It's pathetic how we can't live with the things we can't understand. How we need everything labeled and explained and deconstructed."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Asfixia / Choke)

"The best way is not to fight it, just go. Don't be trying all the time to fix things. What you run from only stays with you longer. When you fight something, you only make it stronger."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)

"We're consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don't concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy's name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra..."
— Chuck Palahniuk

"I tiger can smile
A snake will say it loves you
Lies make us evil"
— Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club: A Novel)

"people don't want their lives fixed. nobody wants their problems solved.
their dramas. their distractions. their stories resolved. their messes cleaned up.
because what would they have left? just the big scary unknown."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Survivor)

"i'm not sure what we're running from. nobody. or the future. fate. growing up. getting old. picking up the pieces. as if running we won't have to get on with our lives."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)

"We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club: A Novel)

"The truth is . . . you think what people want you to think."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Haunted)

"the one you love and the one who loves you are never, ever the same person."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)

"You can’t fool people into loving you."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Choke)

"If something wants to be a story, it will be."
— Scarlett Thomas (The End of Mr. Y)

"When I get lonely these days, I think: So BE lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person's body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings."
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

"This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something. "
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

"eventually, everything goes away."
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

"But never again use another person's body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilling yearnings.
"
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

""you have the opposite of poker face. You have like...... miniature golf face.""
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

"This was my moment to look for the kind of healing and peace that can only come from solitude.Page 8."
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

"There's no trouble in this world so serious that it can't be cured with a hot bath, a glass of whiskey and the Book of Common Prayer."
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

"Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it."
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

"...God never slams a door in your face without opening a box of Girl Scout cookies..."
— Elizabeth Gilbert

"He broke my heart. You merely broke my life."
— Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita)

"Don't cry, I'm sorry to have deceived you so much, but that's how life is."
— Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita)

"And yet I adore him. I think he's quite crazy, and with no place or occupation in life, and far from happy, and philosophically irresponsible – and there is absolutely nobody like him.
"
— Vladimir Nabokov (Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle)

"What is hell? I still maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)

"It seems to me now that the plain state of being human is dramatic enough for anyone; you don't need to be a heroin addict or a performance poet to experience extremity. You just have to love someone."
— Nick Hornby (How to Be Good)

"If you really wanted to mess me up, you should have got to me earlier."
— Nick Hornby (High Fidelity)

"Most people have a rope that ties them to someone, and that rope can be short or it can be long. (Be long. Belong. Get it?) You don't know how long, though. It's not your choice."
— Nick Hornby (A Long Way Down)

"When you're unhappy, I guess everything in the world - reading, eating, sleeping - has something buried somewhere inside it that just makes you unhappier."
— Nick Hornby (A Long Way Down)

"I lost the plot for a while then. And I lost the subplot, the script, the soundtrack, the intermission, my popcorn, the credits, and the exit sign."
— Nick Hornby (High Fidelity: A Novel)

"Even bad times have good things in them to make you feel alive."
— Nick Hornby (A Long Way Down)

"I don't believe in Heaven or anything. But I want to be the kind of person that qualifies for entry anyway."
— Nick Hornby (How to Be Good)

"Telling me I can do anything I want is like pulling the plug out of the bath and tehn telling the water it can go anywhere it wants. Try it, and see what happens. "
— Nick Hornby (A Long Way Down)

"The truth will set you free...either that or it'll get you a punch in the nose. Surviving in whatever life you're living means lying, and lying corrodes the soul, so take a break from the lies for just one minute."
— Nick Hornby

"It's just that romance, with its dips and turns and glooms and highs, its swoops and swoons and blues, is a natural metaphor for music itself"
— Nick Hornby (Songbook)

"Hard is trying to rebuild yourself, piece by piece, with no instruction book, and no clue as to where all the important bits are supposed to go."
— Nick Hornby (A Long Way Down)

"I miss him like one might miss a scar, or wooden leg, something disfiguring but characteristic."
— Nick Hornby

"Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead. "
— Charles Bukowski

"there is always one woman to save you from another and as that woman saves you she makes ready to destroy"
— Charles Bukowski (Love Is a Dog from Hell: Poems, 1974-1977)

"You have my soul and I have your money"
— Charles Bukowski