"All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by frost."
— J.R.R. Tolkien (The Fellowship of the Ring)

"It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Let us step into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince)

"Nitwit, blubber, oddment, tweak."
— J.K. Rowling

"Freedom is what we do with what is done to us."
— Jean-Paul Sartre

"[...] the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!' What did they call such young people in Goethe's Germany?"
— Jack Kerouac (On the Road)

"I was trying to feel some kind of good-by. I mean I’ve left schools and places I didn’t even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don’t care if it’s a sad good-by or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know I’m leaving it. If you don’t you feel even worse."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."
— James Joyce (Dubliners)

"This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and taking my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go"
— Theodore Roethke (The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke)

"Love is not all: It is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain,
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
and rise and sink and rise and sink again.
Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
pinned down by need and moaning for release
or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It may well be. I do not think I would."
— Edna St. Vincent Millay

"Be the sun and all will see you."
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

"We are our choices."
— Jean-Paul Sartre

"When Fortuna spins you downward, go out to a movie and get more out of life."
— John Kennedy Toole (A Confederacy of Dunces)

"He was going to live forever, or die in the attempt."
— Joseph Heller (Catch-22)

"The Savage nodded, frowning. "You got rid of them. Yes, that's just like you. Getting rid of everything unpleasant instead of learning to put up with it. Whether 'tis better in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows or outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them...But you don't do either. Neither suffer nor oppose. You just abolish the slings and arrows. It's too easy."

..."What you need," the Savage went on, "is something with tears for a change. Nothing costs enough here."
— Aldous Huxley (Brave New World)

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

"The greater the scientific advance, the more primitive the fear."
— Don DeLillo (White Noise)

"Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death and judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends."
— J.R.R. Tolkien (The Fellowship of the Ring)

"All we have is to decide what to do with the time that is given to us. "
— J.R.R. Tolkien (The Fellowship of the Ring)

"Listeners, that brings us to the end of another Potterwatch. We don’t know when it will be possible to broadcast again, but you can be sure we shall be back. Keep twiddling those dials: the next password will be ‘Mad-Eye.’ Keep each other safe. Keep faith. Good night."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows)

"Harry is the best hope we have, Trust him."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows)

"The ministry has fallen. Scrimgeour is dead. They are coming."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows)

"DUMBLEDORE'S ARMY, STILL RECRUITING"
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows)

"Remember, if the time should come when you have to make a choice between what is right and what is easy, remember what happened to a boy who was good, and kind, and brave, because he strayed across the path of Lord Voldemort. Remember Cedric Diggory."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire)

"A breeze ruffled the neat hedges of Privet Drive, which lay silent and tidy under the inky sky, the very last place you would expect astonishing things to happen. Harry Potter rolled over inside his blankets without waking up. One small hand closed on the letter beside him and he slept on, not knowing he was special, not knowing he was famous, not knowing he would be woken in a few hours' time by Mrs. Dursley's scream as she opened the front door to put out the milk bottles, nor that he would spend the next few weeks being prodded and pinched by his cousin Dudley...He couldn't know that at this very moment, people meeting in secret all over the country were holding up their glasses and saying in hushed voices: "To Harry Potter - the boy who lived!"
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone)

"It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night is another thing."
— Ernest Hemingway (The Sun Also Rises)

"Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost."
— Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being)

"I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different."
— Kurt Vonnegut (A Man Without a Country)

"It's always been hard for me to tell the difference between denial and what used to be known as hope."
— Michael Chabon (Wonder Boys)

"Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars."
— Gustave Flaubert

"If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it; that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die."
— William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)

"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Act 5, scene 5, 19–28 "
— William Shakespeare (Macbeth)

"It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves."
— William Shakespeare

"Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring barque,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved."
— William Shakespeare (Great Sonnets)

"Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is."
— Albert Camus

""Styx and The Stones may break my bones but 'More than Words' will never hurt me""
— Chuck Klosterman (Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story)

"If I love you, what business is it of yours?"
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle."
— Lewis Carroll

"Art, after all, is - at its best - a lie that tells us the truth."
— Nam Le

"I don't like having feelings," Eric said coldly, and he left.
That was a tough exit line to top."
— Charlaine Harris (Club Dead)