"If she can't spell, why is she a librarian? Librarians should know how to spell."
— Beverly Cleary (Ramona's World)

"Genuine love is volitional rather than emotional. The person who truely loves does so because of a decision to love. This person has made a commitment to be loving whether or not the loving feeling is present. ...Conversely, it is not only possible but necessary for a loving person to avoid acting on feelings of love."
— M. Scott Peck (The Road Less Traveled, 25th Anniversary Edition)

"She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain."
— Louisa May Alcott (Work: A Story of Experience)

"I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship."
— Louisa May Alcott (Little Women)

"Stay is a charming word in a friend's vocabulary."
— Louisa May Alcott

"Don't own so much clutter that you will be relieved to see your house catch fire."
— Wendell Berry (Farming: a hand book)

"Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do."
— Wendell Berry

"Let us have the candor to acknowledge that what we call "the economy" or "the free market" is less and less distinguishable from warfare."
— Wendell Berry

"We are going to have to gather up the fragments of knowledge and responsibilities that have been turned over to governments, corporations, and specialists, and put those fragments back together again in our own minds and in our families and household and neighborhoods."
— Wendell Berry

"Be joyful because it is humanly possible."
— Wendell Berry

"You can best serve civilization by being against what usually passes for it."
— Wendell Berry

"Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed... We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in."
— Wallace Stegner

"Home is a notion that only nations of the homeless fully appreciate and only the uprooted comprehend."
— Wallace Stegner (Angle of Repose)

"...you must have brought something. Books? I never saw you without a green bag of books."
— Wallace Stegner

"Instead of adapting, as we began to do, we have tried to make country and climate over to fit our existing habits and desires. Instead of listening to the silence, we have shouted into the void."
— Wallace Stegner, "Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs"

"Reading can be a road to freedom or a key to a secret garden, which, if tended, will transform all of life."
— Katherine Paterson

"It is not enough to simply teach children to read;
we have to give them something worth reading.
Something that will stretch their imaginations-
something that will help them make sense of their own lives
and encourage them to reach out toward people
whose lives are quite different from their own."
— Katherine Paterson

"For this is the journey that men make, to find themselves. If they fail in this, it doesn't matter much what else they find."
— James A. Michener

"You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive."
— James Baldwin

"The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated. "
— James Baldwin

"Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced."
— 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)

"Love takes off the masks we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within."
— James Baldwin

"Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be"
— James Baldwin

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."
— Dr. Seuss

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

"So many books, so little time."
— Frank Zappa

"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference."
— Elie Wiesel

"You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough"
— Mae West

"For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?"
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"In vain have I struggled but it will not do, my feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you, how much I love and admire you."
— Jane Austen

"Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love."
— Jane Austen

"What are men to rocks and mountains?"
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid."
— Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)

"Ah! There is nothing like staying at home, for real comfort."
— Jane Austen

"You must know... surely, you must know it was all for you. You are too generous to trifle with me. I believe you spoke with my aunt last night, and it has taught me to hope as I'd scarcely allowed myself before. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes have not changed, but one word from you will silence me forever. If, however, your feelings have changed, I will have to tell you: you have bewitched me, body and soul, and I love, I love, I love you. I never wish to be parted from you from this day on."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"Nothing ever fatigues me, but doing what I do not like."
— Jane Austen

"What strange creatures brothers are!"
— Jane Austen

"Real solemn history, I cannot be interested in.... The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars and pestilences in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all."
— Jane Austen

"Miss Barry was a kindred spirit after all," Anne confided to Marilla, "You wouldn't think so to look at her, but she is. . . Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It's splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world."
— L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables)

"Well, it all comes to this; there's no use trying to live in other people's opinions. The only thing to do is to live in your own. After all, I believe in myself. I'm not so bad and silly as they think me, and I'm not consumptive, and I can write. Now that I've written it all out I feel differently about it. The only thing that still aggravates me is that Miss Potter pitied me -- pitied by a Potter!"
— L.M. Montgomery (Emily Climbs)

"He loved her, of course, but better than that, he chose her, day after day. Choice: that was the thing."
— Sherman Alexie (The Toughest Indian in the World)

"We only know how to lose and be lost."
— Sherman Alexie (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian)

"“If you care about something enough, it’s going to make you cry. But you have to use it. Use your tears. Use your pain. Use your fear. Get mad. Arnold, get mad.”"
— Sherman Alexie (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian)

"If you let people into your life a little bit, they can be pretty damn amazing."
— Sherman Alexie (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian)