"Although I was able to maintain a pleasant expression, I was mentally throwing up in her face."
— Augusten Burroughs

""To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek him the greatest adventure; to find him, the greatest human achievement." "
— Augustine of Hippo

"They always say they didn't. I never heard of one who said, 'You know, I deserve this.' Never happens."
— Michael Crichton (Disclosure)

"In this point at least, the poor are far more philosophic than the rich -- that they show a more ready and cheerful submission to what they consider as irremediable evils, or irreparable losses. "
— Thomas DeQuincey

"You have what I can afford to give. You are a panhandler, begging for anything, and I am the man walking briskly by, tossing a quarter or so into your paper cup. I can afford to give you this. This does not break me."
— Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius)

"What a need we humans have for confession. To a priest, to a friend, to a psychoanalyst, to a relative, to an enemy, even to a torturer when there is no one else, it doesn't matter so long as we speak out what moves within us. Even the most secretive of us do it, if no more than writing in a private diary. And I have often thought as I read stories and novels and poems, especially poems, that they are no more than authors' confessions transformed by their art into something that confesses for us all. Indeed, looking back on my life-long passion for reading, the one activity that has kept me going and given me the most and only lasting pleasure, I think this is the reason that explains why it means so much to me. The books, the authors who matter the most are those who speak to me and speak for me all those things about life I most need to hear as the confession of myself."
— Aidan Chambers (Postcards from No Man's Land)