"The imagination needs moodling,--long, inefficient happy idling, dawdling and puttering. "
— Brenda Ueland

"The shortest distance between two points is always under construction. "
— Rebecca McClanahan

"Not everyone has something to say. This will not stop them from saying it."
— Leonard Pitts Jr.

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

"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid."
— Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)

"For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?"
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense."
— Jane Austen

"I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other."
— Jane Austen (Emma)

"Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised or a little mistaken."
— Jane Austen

"Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love."
— Jane Austen

"It is only a novel... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language"
— Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)

"Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure."
— Jane Austen

"It would be mortifying to the feelings of many ladies, could they be made to understand how little the heart of a man is affected by what is costly or new in their attire... Woman is fine for her own satisfaction alone. No man will admire her the more, no woman will like her the better for it. Neatness and fashion are enough for the former, and a something of shabbiness or impropriety will be most endearing to the latter."
— Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)

"That's what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you to another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It's geometrically progressive - all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment."
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

"Perhaps there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers."
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

"Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them. If parents and kids can talk together, we won't have as much censorship because we won't have as much fear."
— Judy Blume

"[I]t's not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written. The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers."
— Judy Blume

"The best books come from someplace deep inside.... Become emotionally involved. If you don't care about your characters, your readers won't either."
— Judy Blume

"A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper."
— Ursula K. Le Guin

"Why does what was beautiful suddenly shatter in hindsight because it concealed dark truths? Because such a situation makes it impossible to be happy? But we were happy! Sometimes the memory of happiness cannot stay true because it ended unhappily. Because happiness is only real if it lasts forever? Because things always end painfully if they contained pain, conscious or unconscious all along?"
— Bernhard Schlink

"There's no need to talk about it, because the truth of what one says lies in what one does."
— Bernhard Schlink

"How we feel about our own self, how well or little we know our own self, whether we feel alive inside, largely determine the quality of the time we spend alone, as well as the quality of the relationships we have with other people."
— Stephanie Dowrick (Intimacy and Solitude)

"Anything you do fully is an alone journey."
— Natalie Goldberg (Writing Down the Bones)

"[D]on't ever apologize to an author for buying something in paperback, or taking it out from a library (that's what they're there for. Use your library). Don't apologize to this author for buying books second hand, or getting them from bookcrossing or borrowing a friend's copy. What's important to me is that people read the books and enjoy them, and that, at some point in there, the book was bought by someone. And that people who like things, tell other people. The most important thing is that people read... "
— Neil Gaiman

"Yes, death. Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no to-morrow. To forget time, to forget life, to be at peace. You can help me. You can open for me the portals of death's house, for love is always with you, and love is stronger than death is."
— Oscar Wilde (The Canterville Ghost)

"A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe."
— Madeleine L'Engle