"Call Me Ishmael"
— Herman Melville (Moby Dick)

"Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up."
— James Baldwin

"I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. "
— James Baldwin

"To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time. "
— James Baldwin

"I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain."
— James Baldwin (The Fire Next Time)

"I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb."
— Herman Melville

"I'm Gentleman Death in silk and lace, come to put out the candles. The canker in the heart of the rose."
— Anne Rice (The Vampire Lestat)

"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)

"I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands,
organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same
food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases,
heal'd by the same means, warm'd and cool'd by the same winter
and summer, as a Christian is?

If you prick us, do we not bleed? If
you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?
And if you wrong us, do we not revenge? If we are like you in the
rest, we will resemble you in that.
- (Act III, Scene I)"
— William Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice)

"Lord, what fools these mortals be!"
— William Shakespeare

"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)

"If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire)

"The truth. It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should be treated with caution."
— J.K. Rowling

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselssly into the past."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald

"A room without books is like a body without a soul."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."
— Albert Einstein

"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt."
— Abraham Lincoln

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
— Mark Twain

"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You too? I thought I was the only one."
— C.S. Lewis

"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on."
— Robert Frost

"Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first."
— Mark Twain