"I'll hold on to the world tight some day. I've got one finger on it now; that's a beginning."
— Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451)

"It's not where you're born
It's not where you belong
It's not how weak
But what will make you strong
- Summer Rain"
— U2

"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened."
— Dr. Seuss

"Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend."
— Albert Camus

"I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying."
— Oscar Wilde

"A day without sunshine is like, you know, night."
— Steve Martin

"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square hole. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."
— Apple Computer Inc.

"It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are."
— e.e. cummings

"Even more, I had never meant to love him. One thing I truly knew - knew it in the pit of my stomach, in the center of my bones, knew it from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet, knew it deep in my empty chest - was how love gave someone the power to break you.
I'd been broken beyond repair."
— Stephenie Meyer (New Moon)

"i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear no fate (for you are my fate,my sweet)i want no world (for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)"
— e.e. cummings

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

"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep."
— Scott Adams

"Art is not what you see, but what you make others see."
— Edgar Degas

"Creativity takes courage. "
— Henri Matisse

"Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious."
— Oscar Wilde

"Life is a blank canvas, and you need to throw all the paint on it you can."
— Danny Kaye

"Love art in yourself, and not yourself in art."
— Constantin Stanislavski (My Life in Art)

"I mean, I don’t know how the world broke. And I don’t know if there’s a God who can help us fix it. But the fact that the world is broken - I absolutely believe that. Just look around us. Every minute - every single second - there are a million things you could be thinking about. A million things you could be worrying about. Our world - don’t you just feel we’re becoming more fragmented? I used to think that when I got older, the world would make so much more sense. But you know what? The older I get, the more confusing it is to me. The more complicated it is. Harder. You’d think we’d be getting better at it. But there’s just more and more chaos. The pieces - they’re everywhere. And nobody knows what to do about it. I find myself grasping, Nick. You know that feeling? That feeling when you just want the right thing to fall into the right place, not only because it’s right, but because it would mean that such a thing is still possible? I want to believe that."
— Rachel Cohn (Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist)

"It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone)

"This is where you can find your soul if you dare. Where you can touch that part of you that you've never dared look at before. Do not come here and ask me to show you how to draw a face. Ask me to help you find the wind."
— Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak)

"If I could dream at all it would be about you. And I'm not ashamed of it."
— Stephenie Meyer (Twilight)

"Twilight again, he murmured." Another ending. No matter how perfect the day is, it always has to end."
— Stephenie Meyer (Twilight)

"Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It's not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything."
— Muhammad Ali

"I fall asleep with my friends around me, the only place i know. I'm going to call this home."
— Jimmy Eat World

""See, people come into your life for a reason. They might not know it themselves, why. You might not know it. But there's a reason. There has to be""
— Joyce Carol Oates (After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away)

"I've never understood why looking hot had to be equated with sex and conquest. Whatever happened to anticipation, to courtship, to true love? Can't a person look hot and not have it mean something? Call me an old-fashioned Naomi bitch, but I'm holding out for true love. Even if it's an unattainable fantasy"
— David Levithan (Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List)

"Just because a person is beautiful doesn't mean there's no soul beneath. Doesn't mean that person hasn't suffered like everyone else, doesn't mean they don't hope to still be a good human being in an awful world."
— David Levithan (Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List)

"Maybe your history just repeats and repeats until it batters you enough to snap the seams that hold you together"
— David Levithan (Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List)

"There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten, but I've loved another with all my heart and soul, and to me, this has always been enough."
— Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook)

"We'd said we'd keep in touch. But touch is not something you can keep; as soon as it's gone, it's gone. We should have said we'd keep in words, because they are all we can string between us--words on a telephone line, words appearing on a screen."
— David Levithan

"‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand.’ First single. Fucking brilliant. Perhaps the most fucking brilliant song ever written. Because they nailed it. That’s what everyone wants. Not 24-7 hot wet sex. Not a marriage that lasts a hundred years. Not a Porsche or a blow job or a million-dollar crib. No. They wanna hold your hand. They have a feeling that they can’t hide."
— Rachel Cohn (Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist)

"It's a total lie to say there's only one person you're going to be with for the rest of your life. If you're lucky - and if you try really hard - there will always be more than one. "
— Rachel Cohn (Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List)

"There is never a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment."
— Sarah Dessen (The Truth About Forever)

"People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.

A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.

A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master..."
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

"Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes."
— Carl Gustav Jung

"I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way."
— Pablo Neruda (100 Love Sonnets/Cien Sonetos De Amor)

"I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too."
— Pablo Neruda

"Mi corazon se desato en el viento.

My heart broke loose on the wind."
— Pablo Neruda, "Poetry"

"Give me, for my life,
all lives,
give me all the pain
of everyone,
I'm going to turn it into hope.
Give me
all the joys,
even the most secret,
because otherwise
how will these things be known?
I have to tell them,
give me
the labors
of everyday,
for that's what I sing"
— Pablo Neruda

"Life is an awful, ugly place to not have a best friend."
— Sarah Dessen (Someone Like You)

"No relationship is perfect, ever. There are always some ways you have to bend, to compromise, to give something up in order to gain something greater...The love we have for each other is bigger than these small differences. And that's the key. It's like a big pie chart, and the love in a relationship has to be the biggest piece. Love can make up for a lot."
— Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)

"Love is needing someone. Love is putting up with someone's bad qualities because they somehow complete you."
— Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)

"I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next.
Delicious Ambiguity."
— Gilda Radner

"You could be
the leaf that never falls from the tree
you could be
the sun that never leaves the sky
this might be
the happy ending without the ending
this might be
a reason to try"
— David Levithan (How They Met, and Other Stories)

"I want to write my life. I want to be able to write my life.

You are a second away from saying it.


You have no idea how much I love you."
— David Levithan (How They Met, and Other Stories)

"It doesn't have to be on Valentine's Day. It doesn't have to be by the time you turn eighteen or thirty-three or fifty-nine. It doesn't have to conform to whatever is usual. It doesn't have to be kismet at once, or rhapsody by the third date.
It just has to be. In time. In place. In spirit.
It just has to be."
— David Levithan

"It's all in the view. That's what I mean about forever, too. For any one of us our forever could end in an hour, or a hundred years from now. You never know for sure, so you'd better make every second count."
— Sarah Dessen (The Truth About Forever)

"It was just one of those things," I said, "You know, that just happen. You don't think or plan. You just do it."
— Sarah Dessen (The Truth About Forever)

"What is family? They were the people who claimed you. In good, in bad, in parts or in whole, they were the ones who showed up, who stayed in there, regardless. It wasn't just about blood relations or shared chromosomes, but something wider, bigger. We had many families over time. Our family of origin, the family we created, and the groups you moved through while all of this was happening: friends, lovers, sometimes even strangers. None of them perfect, and we couldn't expect them to be. You can't make any one person your world. The trick was to take what each could give you and build your world from it."
— Sarah Dessen

"And always remember how much your crazy sister loves you."
— Sarah Dessen