"His face searching the bus windows looked expectant, impatient, and a little anxious. It was a husband's face. Familiar, known, increasing beloved. Mary Ann, I reflected, had an awful lot to learn. And actually, I reflected, I wouldn't be in her shoes right now for all the flowers in Bermuda...having it all to learn again.
"
— Ann Head

"To love would be an awfully big adventure."
— J.M. Barrie (Peter Pan)

"To die will be an awfully big adventure."
— J.M. Barrie (Peter Pan)

"I have for the first time found what I can truly love–I have found you. You are my sympathy–my better self–my good angel–I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my centre and spring of life, wrap my existence about you–and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one."
— Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)

"Stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone ought to be."
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

"Having a baby is like getting a tattoo on your face. You really need to be certain it's what you want before you commit."
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

"The children were overwhelmingly morbid. Not a single adult asked me where butterflies go when they die, but this question was more popular than pixie sticks with the under-four-foot set. I cursed parents for not preparing their children. When I was five, my mother and sister sat me up on the kitchen counter and explained the facts of life: the Easter Bunny didn't exist, Elijah was G-d's invisible friend, with any luck Nana would die soon, and if I ever saw a unicorn, I should kill it or catch it for cash. I turned out okay."
— Sloane Crosley (I Was Told There'd Be Cake)

"I was taught that candles are like house cats - domesticated versions of something wild and dangerous. There's no way to know how much of that killer instinct lurks in the darkness. I used to think the house-burning paranoia was the result of some upper-middle-class fear regarding the potential destruction of a half-million-dollar Westchester house the size of a matchbox. But then I realized the fear stemmed from something far less complex: we're not used to fire. Candles are a staple of the Judaic existence and, like many suburban residents before us, we're pretty bad Jews."
— Sloane Crosley (I Was Told There'd Be Cake)

"The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it."
— Elizabeth Drew

"I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal."
— Jane Austen