"At long last, you may no longer distinguish what binds you from what is you."
— M.T. Anderson (The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party)

"Empedocles claims that in utero, our backbone is one long solid; and that through the constriction of the womb and the punishments of birth it must be snapped again and again to form our vertebrae; that for the child to have a spine, his back must first be broken."
— M.T. Anderson

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them."
— Mark Twain

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read."
— Groucho Marx (The Essential Groucho)

"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."
— John Lennon

"Books swept me away, this way and that, one after the other; I made endless vows according to their lights for I believed them"
— Annie Dillard

"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)

"Look for God. Look for God like a man with his head on fire looks for water."
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

"Never forget that once upon a time, in an unguarded moment, you recognized yourself as a friend."
— Elizabeth Gilbert

"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)

"All know that the drop merges into the ocean, but few know that the ocean merges into the drop."
— Kabir

"Bruises mapped my body from bumping into tables and tripping over curbs while walking with a book in my hand, my eyes focused on the pages instead of the live space around me."
— Rachel Cohn (You Know Where to Find Me)

"No matter what happens, there is always the business of the world to attend to."
— Gary D. Schmidt (Trouble)

"The world is Trouble...and Grace. That is all there is."
— Gary D. Schmidt (Trouble)

"And what will I be able to do tomorrow that I cannot yet do today?"
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."
— Dr. Seuss

"Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing."
— Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)

"There is no friend as loyal as a book."
— Ernest Hemingway

"She'll be apples"
— April Lurie (The Latent Powers of Dylan Fontaine)

"The world turns and the world spins, the tide runs in and the tide runs out, and there is nothing in the world more beautiful and more wonderful in all its evolved forms that two souls who look at each other straight on. And there is nothing more woeful and soul-saddening than when they are parted...everyting in the world rejoices in the touch, and everything in the world laments in the losing."
— Gary D. Schmidt (Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy)

"The library—the place in my life that was full of books—beagan to teach me that books weren't everything."
— Scott Douglas (Quiet, Please: Dispatches From A Public Librarian)

"A loose feather can't be put back...but a broken wing can sometimes heal."
— Bob Graham

"A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on."
— Mark Twain