"Don't compromise yourself - you're all you have."
— John Grisham (The Rainmaker)

"Rogerson," I asked him sweetly as we sat watching a video in the pool house, "where would I find the pelagic zone?"

"In the open sea," he said. "Now shut up and eat your Junior Mints."
— Sarah Dessen (Dreamland)

"I'd heard of Evergreen Care Center before. Cass and I had always made fun of the stupid ads they ran on TV, featuring some dragged-out woman with a limp perm and big, painted-on circles under her eyes, downing vodka and sobbing uncontrollably. "We can't heal you at Evergreen", the very somber voiceover said. "But we can help you to heal yourself." It had become our own running joke, applicable to almost anything.
"Hey Cass, "I'd say, "hand me that toothpaste."
"Caitlin," she'd say, her voice dark and serious. "I can't hand you the toothpaste. But I CAN help you hand the toothpaste to yourself." "
— Sarah Dessen (Dreamland)

"All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed."
— Sean O'Casey

"Your mother won a special reward," she told me, "because everyone had a head in her pictures. We all applauded."
— Sarah Dessen (Dreamland)

"I can't go on, I'll go on."
— Samuel Beckett (I Can't Go On, I'll Go on: A Selection from Samuel Beckett's Work)

"Ben: You're the one making a scene!
Abigail: I am not making a scene!
Riley: (over headset to Ben) No, we want to make a scene.
Ben: Well, then! FINE! Let's go right now!
Riley: (over headset to Ben) So subtle."
— Riley Poole, Ben Gates, Abigail Chase

"Everyone thinks I named my cat Mango because of his orange eyes, but that's not the case. I named him Mango because the sounds of his purrs and his wheezes and his meows are all various shades of yellow-orange."
— Wendy Mass

"...good shoes will take you to a nice place."

-in Hana Yori Dango."
— Kamio Youko

"She is mine. And I didn't say I would fight fair."
— Meyer, Stephanie

"It's never Lupus."
— Gregory House

"Belize: Hell or heaven?

[Roy indicates "Heaven" through a glance]

Belize: Like San Francisco.

Roy Cohn: A city. Good. I was worried... it'd be a garden. I hate that shit.

Belize: Mmmm. Big city. Overgrown with weeds, but flowering weeds. On every corner a wrecking crew and something new and crooked going up catty corner to that. Windows missing in every edifice like broken teeth, fierce gusts of gritty wind, and a gray high sky full of ravens.

Roy Cohn: Isaiah.

Belize: Prophet birds, Roy. Piles of trash, but lapidary like rubies and obsidian, and diamond-colored cowspit streamers in the wind. And voting booths.

Roy Cohn: And a dragon atop a golden horde.

Belize: And everyone in Balencia gowns with red corsages, and big dance palaces full of music and lights and racial impurity and gender confusion. And all the deities are creole, mulatto, brown as the mouths of rivers. Race, taste and history finally overcome. And you ain't there.

Roy Cohn: And Heaven?

Belize: That was Heaven, Roy."
— Tony Kushner

"A darkness different from Ember's, but just as frightening..."
— Jeanne DuPrau (The Diamond of Darkhold (The Ember Series, #4))

"Her heart was finished. It bore, perhaps, records of life, but it wasn't alive. Too late for decoration. Too late for effects. Further handling could only result in cracks and fractures. People could cut themselves on the edgesof her heart, she was sure of it."
— Stephanie Kallos (Broken for You)

"She had no tolerance for scenes which were not of her own making."
— Edith Wharton (The House of Mirth)

"Only half a page left now. Shall I fill it with 'I love you, I love you'-- like father's page of cats on the mat? No. Even a broken heart doesn't warrant a waste of good paper."
— Dodie Smith

"You can’t save others from themselves because those who make a perpetual muddle of their lives don’t appreciate your interfering with the drama they’ve created. They want your poor-sweet-baby sympathy, but they don’t want to change."
— Sue Grafton (T is for Trespass)

"When you don't know where you're going, you drive on the highway."
— Roger Hedden (Bodies, Rest and Motion.)

"I have really sinned. I am going to pause now, and sit here on the mound repenting in deepest shame..."
— Dodie Smith (I Capture the Castle)

"I know when my life is over my writtings will live on, perhaps in a story or maybe a sweet love song. You see, I do not write for glory or to get anything for free. I just sit down and I write, because it makes so much sense to me."
— Terri F. Williams (Momma's Love)

"Every true genius is bound to be naive.
"
— Friedrich von Schiller

"Has anybody ever seen a drama critic in the daytime? Of course not. They come out after dark, up to no good."
— P.G. Wodehouse

"Rude am I in my speech, And little blessed with the soft phrase of peace."
— William Shakespeare (Othello)

"Only half a page left now. Shall I fill it with 'I love you, I love you'-- like father's page of cats on the mat? No. Even a broken heart doesn't warrant a waste of good paper."
— Dodie Smith (I Capture the Castle)

"To act, you must know pain. You must know what it means to be in love, what it means to be rejected."
— Preity Zinta

"VIVA LA VIE BOHEME!"
— Jonathan Larson (Rent)

"...uncorny, human sized drama"
— Ira Glass

"There Will Be People In Your Life Who Want To Bring You Down. Fake Bitches Who Back Stab You To Get What They Want. Who Will Criticize Every Move You Make And Create Drama Over The Tiniest Things. The Sad Thing Is, They Think You Care. They Think They're Better Then You, And They More Than Likely Always Will. It's A Cliche To Say This But It Really Is Just Jealousy. So, Tough It Out. Value Your Real Friends. Stand Up For What You Believe In, Even If It Makes People Hate You. Hold Your Head Up High, Because Remember - They Would Kill To See You Fall"
— Nicole Stacey-O'Reilly

"Nor shall this peace sleep with her; but as when
The bird of wonder dies, the maiden phoenix,
Her ashes new-create another heir
As great in admiration as herself."
— William Shakespeare (Henry VIII, The Folger LIbrary General Reader's Shakespeare)

"Every reiteration of the idea that _nothing matters_ debases the human spirit.

Every reiteration of the idea that there is no drama in modern life, there is only dramatization, that there is no tragedy, there is only unexplained misfortune, debases us. It denies what we know to be true. In denying what we know, we are as a nation which cannot remember its dreams--like an unhappy person who cannot remember his dreams and so denies that he does dream, and denies that there are such things as dreams."
— David Mamet (Writing in Restaurants: Essays and Prose)

"The moving light, rejoicing in its strength,
Sped from the pyre of pine, and urged its way,
In golden glory, like some strange new sun..."
— Aeschylus; Translator E.D.A. Morshead

"I love how all of you talk about me and try to destroy me. It's kinda funny. Watch next school year the people who said all this shiznit about me will be the first to try to hug me and i'll just laugh in their face like who's the fake hoe now?"
— Briana Rice

"Benedick: What, my dear Lady Disdain! are you yet living?

Beatrice: Is it possible disdain should die while she hath
such meet food to feed it as Signior Benedick?"
— William Shakespeare (Much Ado About Nothing)

"It is as it is. Betren son of Bromwell Defender of Delmarath"
— Cynthia Willerth (The Knife of Truth, A Matter of Honor)

"Symbols are nothing but the natural speech of drama."
— Tennessee Williams

"I saw myself driving through Eternity in a timeless taxi."
— K. Mansfield

"Let's sing our way out of this"
— Isabel Fraire

"I'm so much more scared of white guys than black guys. Like an angry black guys would pull out a gun and be like 'Yo, I'm coming back with my cousins and we're gonna funck you up' and a white guy would be like just 'BANG'!"
— Jeremy Iversen (High School Confidential: Secrets of an Undercover Student)

""A darkness different from Ember's, but just as frightening...""
— Jeanne DuPrau (The Diamond of Darkhold (The Ember Series, #4))

"The drama of the essay is the way the public life intersects with my personal and private life. It's in that intersection that I find the energy of the essay."
— Richard Rodriguez

"How I love - writing, acting, breathing the atmosphere- and one day I'll have it. If I cannot write, I shall die."
— Lily Koppel (The Red Leather Diary: Reclaiming a Life Through the Pages of a Lost Journal)

"The Water bra incident!"
— forgot

"You're only as strong as your weakest link"
— Mrs. Torno

"...his own personal jewel of the orient, midori, with whom he had first seen Kurosawa's Yojimbo. (An exciting film to see with a Japanese girl holding your penis is her hand!)"
— John Irving (Until I Find You: A Novel)