"You are what what you eat eats."
— Michael Pollan (In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto)

"Why do they always teach us that it's easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It's the hardest thing in the world--to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want."
— Ayn Rand

"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
— Michael Pollan (In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto)

"A few hundred years ago there were no differences between magic and medicine."
— Joanne Harris (Blackberry Wine: A Novel)

"Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong."
— Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)

"My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness."
— Dalai Lama XIV

"Joy is the goal of existence, and joy is not to be stumbled upon, but to be achieved, and the act of treason is to let its vision drown in the swamp of the moment's torture."
— Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)

"Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively."
— Dalai Lama XIV

"Only then does he realize what he has done to Mirabelle, how wanting a square inch of her and not all of her has damaged them both, and how he cannot justify his actions except that, well, it was life."
— Steve Martin (Shopgirl: A Novella)

"It was time to take the pumpkin out of the pot and eat it. In the final analysis, that was what solved these big problems of life. You could think and think and get nowhere, but you still had to eat your pumpkin. That brought you down to earth. That gave you a reason for going on. Pumpkin."
— Alexander McCall Smith

"She has learned that her body is precious and it mustn't be offered carelessly ever again, as it holds a direct connection to her heart."
— Steve Martin (Shopgirl)

"Time -- when pursued like a bandit -- will behave like one; always remaining one country or one room ahead of you, changing its name and hair color to elude you, slipping ou the back door of the motel just as you're banging through the lobby with your newest search warrant, leaving only a burning cigarette in the ashtray to taunt you."
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

"I think you have every right to cherry-pick when it comes to moving your spirit and finding peace in God. You take whatever works from wherever you cn find it,a nd you keep moving toward the light. "
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

"How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. "
— Annie Dillard

"The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see."
— Ayn Rand (The Fountainhead)

"To say "I love you" one must know first how to say the "I"."
— Ayn Rand (The Fountainhead)

"Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food."
— Michael Pollan

"The best kind of book," said Barnaby, "is a magic book."

"Naturally," said John."
— Edward Eager (Seven-Day Magic)

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
— Aristotle (Metaphysics)

"Some of what I wrote bordered on blasphemy....If there was a God, He would have to be truth. And in that case, candor--however impertinent--would be more pleasing to Him than posturing."
— Catherine Marshall (Christy)

"Drunkeness, she told us in a rare moment of confidence, is a sin against the fruit, the tree, the wine itself. Wine, distilled and nurtured from bud into fruit; it deserves reverance. Joy. Gentleness.
(Page 194.)"
— Joanne Harris (Five Quarters of the Orange)

"Sometimes I feel like a tree on a hill, at the place where all the wind blows and the hail hits the tree the hardest. All the people I love are down the side aways, sheltered under a great rock, and I am out of the fold, standing alone in the sun and the snow. I feel like I am not part of the rest somehow, although they welcome me and are kind. I see my family as they sit together and it is like theyh ave a certain way between them that is beyond me. I wonder if other folks ever feel included yet alone."
— Nancy E. Turner (These Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901 : A Novel)

"If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders - What would you tell him?"

"I…don't know. What…could he do? What would you tell him?"

"To shrug."
— Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)

"If you don't know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn."
— Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)

"Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone."
— Ayn Rand

"It's pain that changes our lives."
— Steve Martin (Shopgirl: A Novella)

"He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past."
— George Orwell (1984)

"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever."
— George Orwell (1984)

"I like being myself. Myself and nasty."
— Aldous Huxley (Brave New World)

"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."
— Aldous Huxley (Brave New World)

"Don’t try to make life a mathematics problem with yourself in the center and everything coming out equal. When you’re good, bad things can still happen. And if you’re bad, you can still be lucky."
— Barbara Kingsolver (The Poisonwood Bible)

"When we traded homemaking for careers, we were implicitly promised economic independence and worldly influence. But a devil of a bargain it has turned out to be in terms of daily life. We gave up the aroma of warm bread rising, the measured pace of nurturing routines, the creative task of molding our families' tastes and zest for life; we received in exchange the minivan and the Lunchable."
— Barbara Kingsolver (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life)

"Humans can be fairly ridiculous animals."
— Barbara Kingsolver (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life)

"Don't eat anything incapable of rotting."
— Michael Pollan (In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto)

"We all know that it is women who make the decisions, but we have to let men think that the decisions are theirs. It is an act of kindness on the part of women."
— Alexander McCall Smith

"Now constipation was quite a different matter...It would be dreadful for the whole world to know about troubles of that nature. She felt terribly sorry for people who suffered from constipation, and she knew that there were many who did. There were probably enough of them for a political party - which a chance of government. Perhaps - but what would such a party do if it was in power? Nothing, she imagined. It would try to pass legislation, but would fail." (p, 195)"
— Alexander McCall Smith

"That of all people, it should be him; that took her aback. That the heart should settle on somebody like him; that surprised her. But she was so certain about it, so certain."
— Alexander McCall Smith (Dream Angus: The Celtic God of Dreams)

"It's bad enough wasting time without killing it."
— Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)

"Everybody is so terribly sensitive about the things they know best."
— Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)

"Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light."
— Madeleine L'Engle (A Ring of Endless Light)