"Run mad as often as you choose, but do not faint!"
— Jane Austen (Mansfield Park)

"I don't want to be a tree; I want to be its meaning."
— Orhan Pamuk

"He saw things in a way that others did not, so that a city I had lived in all my life seemed a different place, so that a woman became beautiful with the light on her face."
— Tracy Chevalier (Girl with a Pearl Earring)

"When you put your hands and mind and heart into the knowing of a thing ... there is no room in you for fear."
— Patricia A. McKillip

"I think we ought to live happily ever after. "
— Diana Wynne Jones (Howl's Moving Castle)

"Nobody can buy a hat without gossiping."
— Diana Wynne Jones (Howl's Moving Castle)

"Take it from me, Fate doesn't care most of the time."
— Diana Wynne Jones (Castle in the Air)

"Nobody gets praised for the right reasons."
— Diana Wynne Jones (Castle in the Air)

"Words, he decided, were inadequate at best, impossible at worst. They meant too many things. Or they meant nothing at all."
— Patricia A. McKillip (In The Forests of Serre)

"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."
— Douglas Adams

"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
— Douglas Adams (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe)

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be."
— Douglas Adams

"Humans think they are smarter than dolphins because we build cars and buildings and start wars etc...and all that dolphins do is swim in the water, eat fish and play around. Dolphins believe that they are smarter for exactly the same reasons."
— Douglas Adams

"The Guide says that there is an art to flying,” said Ford, “or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss."
— Douglas Adams

"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened."
— Douglas Adams (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe)

"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so."
— Douglas Adams

"The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be."
— Douglas Adams

"The problem with designing something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of a complete fool. "
— Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"
— Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

"Technology is a word that describes something that doesn't work yet."
— Douglas Adams

"I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day."
— Douglas Adams

"It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes."
— Douglas Adams

"He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it. "
— Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 1)

"It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination."
— Douglas Adams (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe)

"I don't want to die! I've still got a headache! I don't want to go to heaven with a headache, I'd be all cross and wouldn't enjoy it!"
— Douglas Adams

"First we thought the PC was a calculator. Then we found out how to turn numbers into letters with ASCII — and we thought it was a typewriter. Then we discovered graphics, and we thought it was a television. With the World Wide Web, we've realized it's a brochure."
— Douglas Adams

"The universe is a lot more complicated than you might think even if you start from a position of thinking that its pretty damn complicated to begin with."
— Douglas Adams

"Well, I mean, yes idealism, yes the dignity of pure research, yes the pursuit of truth in all its forms, but there comes a point I'm afraid where you begin to suspect that the entire multidimensional infinity of the Universe is almost certainly being run by a bunch of maniacs. And if it comes to a choice between spending yet another ten million years finding that out, and on the other hand just taking the money and running, then I for one could do with the exercise."
— Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

"Capital Letters Were Always The Best Way Of Dealing With Things You Didn't Have A Good Answer To."
— Douglas Adams

"Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things."
— Douglas Adams

"Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!"
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe."
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards."
— Søren Kierkegaard

"Every day one should at least hear one little song, read one good poem, see one fine painting and -- if at all possible -- speak a few sensible words."
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"By seeking and blundering we learn."
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving."
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"I love those who yearn for the impossible."
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"A person hears only what they understand."
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"'Know thyself'? If I knew myself, I'd run away!"
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Fishing in a bucket. The total hopelessness of the activity was very soothing. It was the perfect sport. Without the emotional stresses of success and failure, she was entirely free to enjoy the pleasures of the moment... It was a good hobby, and cheap, and if more people did it more often...
"
— Hilary McKay (The Exiles)