"It was, he thought, the difference between being dragged into the arena to face a battle to the death and walking into the arena with your head held high. Some people, perhaps, would say that there was little to choose between the two ways, but Dumbledore knew - and so do I, thought Harry, with a rush of fierce pride, and so did my parents - that there was all the difference in the world."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince)

"Wit beyond measure is a man's greatest treasure."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix)

"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 our choices, Harry, that show us who we truly are, far more than our abilities."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets)

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

"Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they’ll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back."
— John Green (An Abundance of Katherines)

"I’m going to keep going until I succeed — or die. Don’t think I don’t know how this might end. I’ve known it for years. "
— J.K. Rowling

"Nitwit, blubber, oddment, tweak."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone)

"The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive."
— John Green (Looking for Alaska)

"Everything that comes together falls apart. When you stopped wishing things wouldn't fall apart, you stopped suffering when they did."
— John Green

"For a moment, she was quiet. Then she grabbed my hand, whispered, “Run run run run run,” and took off, pulling me behind her."
— John Green (Looking for Alaska)

"The blues are because you're getting fat and maybe it's been raining too long, you're just sad that's all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you're afraid and you don't know what you're afraid of."
— Breakfast At Tiffany's

"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything."
— 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)

"The scar had not pained Harry for nineteen years. All was well."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows)

""You can love someone so much," he thought. "But you can never love people as much as you can miss them.""
— John Green (An Abundance of Katherines)

"Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living"
— Jonathan Safran Foer (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close)

"I'm sorry for my inability to let unimportant things go, for my inability to hold on to the important things."
— Jonathan Safran Foer

"I started inventing things, and then I couldn't stop, like beavers, which I know about. People think they cut down trees so they can build dams, but in reality it's because their teeth never stop growing, and if they didn't constantly file them down by cutting through all of those trees, their teeth would start to grow into their own faces, which would kill them. That's how my brain was."
— Jonathan Safran Foer (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close)

"And so it goes..."
— Kurt Vonnegut

"How nice--to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive."
— Kurt Vonnegut

"And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries."
— Kurt Vonnegut (A Man Without a Country)

"1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them."
— Kurt Vonnegut

"When adults say, "Teenagers think they are invincible" with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail."
— John Green (Looking for Alaska)

"Man has a choice and it's a choice that makes him a man. "
— East of Eden

"It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we invented them."
— John Steinbeck (East of Eden)

"And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected."
— John Steinbeck (East of Eden)

"Perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all one's life."
— Kate Chopin (The Awakening, and Selected Stories)

"The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings. It is a sad spectacle to see the weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth."
— Kate Chopin (The Awakening)

"It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it."
— Oscar Wilde

"The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame."
— Oscar Wilde

"Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught."
— Oscar Wilde

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
— Mark Twain

"We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.
"
— Toni Morrison

"If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it."
— Toni Morrison

"Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike."
— J.K. Rowling

"Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire)

"There is a basin in the mind where words float around on thought and thought on sound and sight. Then there is a depth of thought untouched by words, and deeper still a gulf of formless feelings untouched by thought."
— Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God)