"I love the solitude of reading. I love the deep dive into someone else's story, the delicious ache of a last page."
— Naomi Shihab Nye

"Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits."
— Carl Sandburg

"The pregnant spring gave birth to summer."
— Luanne Rubey

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta."
— Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita)

"The excursion is the same when you go looking for your sorrow as when you go looking for your joy."
— Eudora Welty

"It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves like grass. Yet regardless of where they come from, I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them - with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself. Still illiterate, I was ready for them, committed to all the reading I could give them. . ."
— Eudora Welty

"My main disappointment was always that a book had to end. And then what? But I don't think I was ever disappointed by the books. I must have been what any author would consider an ideal reader. I felt every pain and pleasure suffered or enjoyed by all the characters. Oh, but I identified!"
— Eudora Welty

"How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home."
— William Faulkner

"Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Do not bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself."
— William Faulkner

"A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station…."
— William Faulkner

"To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and to endure the betrayal of false friends. To appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded."
— Bessie Anderson Stanley

"For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Always do what you are afraid to do."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"When it is dark enough, you can see the stars."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"It is not the length of life, but the depth."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Every artist was first an amateur. "
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

""God has blessed you richly, so get down on your knees and thank him. Don’t forget the less fortunate or God will personally kick your ass. I’d love to do it for him, but I can’t be everywhere.""
— Willie Nelson

"There are more old drunks than there are old doctors."
— Willie Nelson

"Your problem is how you are going to spend this one and precious life you have been issued. Whether you're going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are.

From her graduation commencement address to Berkeley."
— Anne Lamott

"Certainty is missing the point entirely."
— Anne Lamott (Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith)

"Are you born again?" he asked, as we taxied down the runway. He was rather prim and tense, maybe a little like David Eisenhower with a spastic colon. I did not know how to answer for a moment.
"Yes," I said. "I am."
My friends like to tell each other that I am not really a born-again Christian. They think of me more along the lines of that old Jonathan Miller routine, where he said, "I'm not really a Jew -- I'm Jew-ish." They think I am Christian-ish. But I'm not. I'm just a bad Christian. A bad born-again Christian. And certainly, like the apostle Peter, I am capable of denying it, of presenting myself as a sort of leftist liberation-theology enthusiast and maybe sort of a vaguely Jesusy bon vivant. But it's not true. And I believe that when you get on a plane, if you start lying you are totally doomed.
So I told the truth; that I am a believer, a convert. I'm probably about three months away from slapping an aluminum Jesus-fish on the back of my car, although I first want to see if the application or stickum in any way interferes with my lease agreement. And believe me, all this boggles even *my* mind. But it's true. I could go to a gathering of foot-wash Baptists and, except for my dreadlocks, fit right in. I would wash their feet; I would let them wash mine."
— Anne Lamott

"I think joy and sweetness and affection are a spiritual path. We're here to know God, to love and serve God, and to be blown away by the beauty and miracle of nature. You just have to get rid of so much baggage to be light enough to dance, to sing, to play. You don't have time to carry grudges; you don't have time to cling to the need to be right.
- author Anne Lamott, in a recent interview. (Source: The Washington Times)"
— Anne Lamott

"It's not how much we give but how much love we put into giving."
— Mother Teresa

"It's pain that changes our lives."
— Steve Martin (Shopgirl: A Novella)

"She has learned that her body is precious and it mustn't be offered carelessly ever again, as it holds a direct connection to her heart."
— Steve Martin (Shopgirl)

"I would assign every lie a color: yellow when they were innocent, pale blue when they sailed over you like the sky, red because I knew they drew blood. And then there was the black lie. That's the worst of all. A black lie was when I told you the truth. "
— Steve Martin

"Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood."
— T.S. Eliot

"Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea."
— T.S. Eliot

"I hope she'll be a fool -- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)

"In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)

""Ah," she cried, "you look so cool."

Their eyes met, and they stared together at each other, alone in space. With an effort she glanced down at the table.

"You always look so cool," she repeated.

She had told him that she loved him, and Tom Buchanan saw."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)

"When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen."
— Ernest Hemingway

"It isn't what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it."
— Dale Carnegie (How to Win Friends & Influence People)

"Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all."
— Dale Carnegie

"Knowledge isn’t power until it is applied."
— Dale Carnegie

"You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you."
— Dale Carnegie (How to Win Friends & Influence People)

"The expression one wears on one's face is far more important than the clothes one wears on one's back."
— Dale Carnegie

"Remember, today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday. "
— Dale Carnegie

"World peace must develop from inner peace. Peace is not just mere absence of violence. Peace is, I think, the manifestation of human compassion."
— Dalai Lama XIV

"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men."
— Plato

"There is truth in wine and children"
— Plato (Symposium and Phaedrus)

"There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain."
— Plato

"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up."
— Pablo Picasso

"Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake. "
— Victor Hugo