"The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn't require any."
— Russell Baker

"Afoot and lighthearted I take to the open road, healthy, free, the world before me."
— Walt Whitman

"Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination."
— Jhumpa Lahiri (Interpreter of Maladies)

"I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible. "
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"It's everybody, I mean. Everything everybody does is so — I don't know — not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and — sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you're conforming just as much only in a different way."
— J.D. Salinger (Franny and Zooey)

"Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering."
— Nicole Krauss (The History of Love)

"There is only one page left to write on. I will fill it with words of only one syllable. I love. I have loved. I will love."
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"Don't you think it's better to be extremely happy for a short while, even if you lose it, than to be just okay for your whole life?"
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"Any God I ever found in church, I brought in myself."
— Alice Walker

"I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."
— Marilyn Monroe

"Things are so hard to figure out when you live from day to day in this feverish and silly world. "
— Jack Kerouac (On the Road: The Original Scroll)