"And now," cried Max, "let the wild rumpus start!"
— Maurice Sendak (Where the Wild Things Are)

"There must be more to life than having everything."
— Maurice Sendak

"Please don't go. We'll eat you up. We love you so."
— Maurice Sendak (Where the Wild Things Are)

"It’s dark now and I am very tired. I love you, always. Time is nothing."
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"Don't you think it's better to be extremely happy for a short while, even if you lose it, than to be just okay for your whole life?"
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"Why is love intensified by absence?"
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"Long ago, men went to sea, and women waited for them, standing on the edge of the water, scanning the horizon for the tiny ship. Now I wait for Henry. He vanishes unwillingly, without warning. I wait for him. Each moment that I wait feels like a year, an eternity. Each moment is as slow and transparent as glass. Through each moment I can see infinite moments lined up, waiting. Why has he gone where I cannot follow?"
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"I wish for a moment that time would lift me out of this day, and into some more benign one. But then I feel guilty for wanting to avoid the sadness; dead people need us to remember them, even if it eats us, even if all we can do is say "I'm sorry" until it is as meaningless air."
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"I hate to be where she is not, when she is not. And yet, I am always going. - Henry deTamble"
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"The compelling thing about making art - or making anything, I suppose - is the moment when the vaporous, insubstantial idea becomes a solid there, a thing, a substance in a world of substances."
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"When the woman you live with is an artist, every day is a surprise."
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"The space that I can call mine.. is so small that my ideas have become small. I am like a caterpillar in a cocoon of paper; all around me are sketches for sculptures, small drawings that seem like moths fluttering against the windows, beating their wings to escape from this tiny space.. Every day the ideas come more reluctantly, as though they know I will starve them and stunt their growth."
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"I place my hands over her ears and tip her head back, and kiss her, and try to put my heart into hers, for safekeeping, in case I lose it again."
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

""It’s dark now and I am very tired. I love you, always. Time is nothing."
"
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"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

"“You’ll get over it…” It’s the clichés that cause the trouble. To lose someone you love is to alter your life for ever. You don’t get over it because ‘it” is the person you loved. The pain stops, there are new people, but the gap never loses. How could it? The particularness of someone who mattered enough to grieve over is not made anodyne by death. This hole in my heart is in the shape of you and no-one else can fit it. Why would I want them to? "
— Jeanette Winterson (Written on the Body)

"They say that every snowflake is different. If that were true, how could the world go on? How could we ever get up off our knees? How could we ever recover from the wonder of it?"
— Jeanette Winterson

"The body shuts down when it has too much to bear; goes its own way quietly inside, waiting for a better time, leaving you numb and half alive."
— Jeanette Winterson (The Passion)

"Why is the measure of love loss?"
— Jeanette Winterson

"He wrote on a piece of paper with his pencil.
Psychosis: out of touch with reality.
Since then, I have been trying to find out what reality is, so that I can touch it."
— Jeanette Winterson

"'In that house, you will find my heart. You must break in, Henri, and get it back for me.'
Was she mad? We had been talking figuratively. Her heart was in her body like mine. I tried to explain this to her, but she took my hand and put it against her chest.
'Feel for yourself.'"
— Jeanette Winterson (The Passion)

"do it from the heart or not at all."
— Jeanette Winterson (The Passion)