"I wish you could have been there for the sun & the rain & the long, hard hills. For the sound of a thousand conversations scattered along the road. For the people laughing & crying & remembering at the end. But, mainly, I wish you could have been there."
— Brian Andreas

"We lay there and looked up at the night sky and she told me about stars called blue squares and red swirls and I told her I'd never heard of them. Of course not, she said, the really important stuff they never tell you. You have to imagine it on your own."
— Brian Andreas

"I have too much to lose, she said, if I cross that line. Like what? I said. She could not think of anything that day so she said she'd get back to me. Since then I've been thinking what I would lose if I cross my line & I haven't come up with anything either. There's always another line somewhere.

"
— Brian Andreas

"Anyone can slay a dragon ...but try waking up every morning and loving the world all over again. That's what takes a real hero.

"
— Brian Andreas

"She said she usually cried at least once each day not because she was sad, but because the world was so beautiful & life was so short."
— Brian Andreas

"You're the strangest person I ever met, she said & I said you too & we decided we'd know each other a long time. "
— Brian Andreas

"I read once that the ancient Egyptians had fifty words for sand & the Eskimos had a hundred words for snow. I wish I had a thousand words for love, but all that comes to mind is the way you move against me while you sleep & there are no words for that."
— Brian Andreas (Story People)

"Time stands still best in moments that look suspiciously like ordinary life."
— Brian Andreas

"What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody."
— J.D. Salinger

"Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them--if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to."
— J.D. Salinger

"I love you to pieces, distraction, etc."
— J.D. Salinger (Franny and Zooey)

"…anyway it wasn’t your reading that started this. It was the laugher, the carefree laughter, the three dimensional Coca Cola advertisement that you were, the try-anything-once friends, the imperviousness to all that came before you, the chain phone calls, the in-jokes, the instant success, the beach houses, the white lace underwear, the private dancing, the good-graced acceptance pf part-time shift work, the apparent absence of expectations, the ever-changing disposable cults of the rural, the family, the eastern, the modern, the postmodern, the impoverished, the sleekly deregulated, the orgasm, the feminine, the feminist, and then the way you canceled with the air of one making a salad"
— Elliot Perlman

"You would love the way he sees you. He uses you as a weapon against himself and not merely because you did"
— Elliot Perlman

""What is it about men that make women so lonely?""
— Elliot Perlman

"It's disappointing to know that someone can see right through you."
— Jodi Picoult (My Sister's Keeper)

"Love is not a because, it's a no matter what."
— Jodi Picoult (Second Glance)

""I love you," he whispered, and that was the moment he knew what he was going to do. When you loved someone, you put their needs before your own. No matter how inconceivable those needs were; no matter how fucked up; no matter how much it made you feel like you were ripping yourself into pieces."
— Jodi Picoult (The Pact: A Love Story)

"Extraordinary things are always hiding in places people never think to look."
— Jodi Picoult (My Sister's Keeper)

"I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together, in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was hurricane. "
— John Green (Looking for Alaska)

"We are all going, I thought, and it applies to turtles and turtlenecks, Alaska the girl and Alaska the place, because nothing can last, not even the earth itself. The Buddha said that suffering was caused by desire, we'd learned, and that the cessation of desire meant the cessation of suffering. When you stopped wishing things wouldn't fall apart, you'd stop suffering when they did."
— John Green (Looking for Alaska)

""I've lived here eighteen years and never once in my life come across anyone who cares about anything that matters.""
— John Green (Paper Towns)

"I said nothing—I hadn’t known Marya, and anyway, “listening quietly” was my general social strategy"
— John Green (Looking for Alaska)

"Suddenly, all I can think about are all the things I don't know about him. All the things I never had time to learn. I don't know if his feet are ticklish or how long his toes are. I don't know what nightmares he had as a child. I don't know which stars are his favorites, what shapes he sees in the clouds. I don't know what he is truly afraid of or what memories he holds closest.
And I don't have enough time now, never enough time. I want to be in the moment with him, feel his body against mine and think of nothing else, but my mind explodes with grief for all that I am missing. All that I will miss. All that I have wasted."
— Carrie Ryan (The Forest of Hands and Teeth)

"“I am afraid to show you who I really am, because if I show you who I really am, you might not like it--and that's all I got.”"
— Sabrina Ward Harrison (Spilling Open: The Art of Becoming Yourself)

"The truth is WE ALL ACHE.
WE ALL HAVE GROWING PAINS
and wonder if WE ARE
OKAY adn enough + loved.
THE THING IS - WE ARE.
REALLY.
WITHOUT the silver shoes
and lepord print sheet.
WE ARE ENOUGH WITHOUT
all the things we buy
to make us much more
than we are or need to be
we are simple
and complex
and rare
as is."
— Sabrina Ward Harrison (Spilling Open: The Art of Becoming Yourself)

"Driving to class with him. All I could
think about was
that it had been
three days
since I'd touched
his face
AND HE
SEEMED
so fine.

I said, to him "you seem like you didn't miss a beat."

He looked at me
and said
"Sabrina, I've missed
so many beats, I've
MADE A RhytHM.""
— Sabrina Ward Harrison (Spilling Open: The Art of Becoming Yourself)

"...we accept the love we think we deserve."
— Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)

"And in that moment, I swear we were infinite."
— Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)

"So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be."
— 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)

"Things change. And friends leave. Life doesn't stop for anybody."
— Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)

"So, I guess we are who we are for alot 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 where 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 walked over to the hill where we used to go and sled. There were a lot of little kids there. I watched them flying. Doing jumps and having races. And I thought that all those little kids are going to grow up someday. And all of those little kids are going to do the things that we do. And they will all kiss someone someday. But for now, sledding is enough. I think it would be great if sledding were always enough, but it isn't."
— Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)

"Downtown. Lights on buildings and everything that makes you wonder. And in that moment, I swear we were infinite."
— Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)

"Everyone else is either asleep or having sex. I've been watching cable television and eating jello."
— Stephen Chbosky

"There is something beautiful about a billion stars held steady by a God who knows what He is doing. (They hang there, the stars, like notes on a page of music, free-form verse, silent mysteries swirling in the blue like jazz.) And as I lay there, it occurred to me that God is up there somewhere. Of course, I had always known He was, but this time I felt it, I realized it, the way a person realizes they are hungry or thirsty. The knowledge of God seeped out of my brain and into my heart. I imagined Him looking down on this earth, half angry because His beloved mankind had cheated on Him, had committed adultery, and yet hopelessly in love with her, drunk with love for her."
— Donald Miller

"...sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself..."
— Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality)

"I always thought the Bible was more of a salad thing, you know, but it isn't. It's a chocolate thing."
— Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality)

"I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes.

After that I liked jazz music.

Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way.

I used to not like God because God didn't resolve. But that was before any of this happened."
— Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality)

"Writers don't make any money at all. We make about a dollar. It is terrible. But then again we don't work either. We sit around in our underwear until noon then go downstairs and make coffee, fry some eggs, read the paper, read part of a book, smell the book, wonder if perhaps we ourselves should work on our book, smell the book again, throw the book across the room because we are quite jealous that any other person wrote a book, feel terribly guilty about throwing the schmuck's book across the room because we secretly wonder if God in heaven noticed our evil jealousy, or worse, our laziness. We then lie across the couch facedown and mumble to God to forgive us because we are secretly afraid He is going to dry up all our words because we envied another man's stupid words. And for this, as I said, we are paid a dollar. We are worth so much more."
— Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality)

"You never question the truth of something until you have to explain it to a skeptic."
— Donald Miller

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

"It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart."
— Anne Frank (Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl)

"No one has ever become poor by giving."
— Anne Frank (The Diary of a Young Girl)

"Human greatness does not lie in wealth or power, but in character and goodness. People are just people, and all people have faults and shortcomings, but all of us are born with a basic goodness."
— Anne Frank

"Although I'm only fourteen, I know quite well what I want, I know who is right and who is wrong. I have my opinions, my own ideas and principles, and although it may sound pretty mad from an adolescent, I feel more of a person than a child, I feel quite indepedent of anyone."
— Anne Frank (The Diary of Anne Frank)

"Good grief!"
— Charlie Brown

"I think I'm afraid of being happy because whenever I get too happy something bad always happens."
— Charlie Brown