"My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light."
— Edna St. Vincent Millay (Collected Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay)

" If at first you don t succeed then skydiving definitely isn t for you."
— Steven Wright

"I think Heaven will be like a first kiss.

-Della Lee"
— Sarah Addison Allen (The Sugar Queen)

"I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine. (12 May 1780)"
— John Adams

"Many years later, in front of the firing squad, colonel Aureliano Buendía would remember that distant afternoon his father took him to see ice."
— Gabriel García Márquez

"There are gods in Alabama: Jack Daniel's, high school quarterbacks, trucks, big tits, and also Jesus. "
— Joshilyn Jackson (Gods in Alabama)

"He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad."
— Rafael Sabatini (Scaramouche)

"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality."
— Shirley Jackson (The Haunting of Hill House)

"I would so hate to be a first-person character! Always on your guard, always having people read your thoughts!"
— Jasper Fforde (Lost in a Good Book)

"It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves."
— Edmund Hillary

"She open her eyes and met his. The impact was so strong he was amazed that his figures continued playing with out pause."
— Patricia Briggs (Cry Wolf)

"Isn't it funny how the memories you cherish before a breakup can become your worst enemies afterwards? The thoughts you loved to think about, the memories you wanted to hold up to the light and view from every angle--it suddenly seems a lot safer to lock them in a box, far from the light of day and throw away the key. It's not an act of bitterness. It's an act if self-preservation. It's not always a bad idea to stay behind the window and look out at life instead, is it?"
— Allyson Braithwaite Condie (First Day)

"Our first impressions are generated by our experiences and our environment, which means that we can change our first impressions . . . by changing the experiences that comprise those impressions."
— Malcolm Gladwell

""I have never been in love before," Julian said. "You're my first-and you'll be my only."
"
— L.J. Smith (The Hunter)

"...I couldn't let go of the thought that it had, in fact, been he, restless and moody Heathcliff. Day after day, he floated through all the Wal-Marts in America, searching for me in a million lonely aisles."
— Marisha Pessl (Special Topics in Calamity Physics)

"In running, it doesn't matter whether you come in first, in the middle of the pack, or last. You can say 'I have finished.' There is a lot of satisfaction in that."
— A runner

"Whatever your gravity is when you get to the door, remember -- the enemy's gate it down. If you step through your own door like you're out for a stroll, you're a big target and you deserve to get hit. With more than a flasher."
— Orson Scott Card

""Don't be a great man, just be a man, and let history make it's own judgments.""
— Zefram Cochran

"He hesitated — not in the normal way, the human way. Not the way a man might hesitate before he kissed a woman, to gauge her reaction, to see how he would be received. Perhaps he would hesitate to prolong the moment, that ideal moment of anticipation, sometimes better than the kiss itself. Edward hesitated to test himself, to see if this was safe, to make sure he was still in control of his need. And then his cold, marble lips pressed very softly against mine."
— Bella - Twilight - Stephenie Meyer

"He liked radical politics and had a fondness for chocolate."
— Laura Kinsale (Flowers from the Storm)

"Entertainment has a bad name...The word wears spandex, pasties, a leisure suit studded with blinking lights. "
— Michael Chabon (Maps and Legends)

"I spent the last Friday of summer vacation spreading hot, sticky tar across the roof of George Washington High. My companions were Dopey, Toothless, and Joe, the brain surgeons in charge of building maintenance. At least they were getting paid. I was working forty feet above the ground, breathing in sulfur fumes from Satan's vomitorium, for free.

Character building, my father said.

Mandatory community service, the judge said. Court-ordered restitution for the Foul Deed. He nailed me with the bill for the damage I had done, which meant I had to sell my car and bust my hump at a landscaping company all summer. Oh, and he gave me six months of meetings with a probation officer who thought I was a waste of human flesh.

Still, it was better than jail.

I pushed the mop back and forth, trying to coat the seams evenly. We didn't want any rain getting into the building and destroying the classrooms. Didn't want to hurt the school. No, sir, we sure didn't."
— Laurie Halse Anderson (Twisted)

"Best opening line from a novel:

“It was an overcast late November morning, the grass splintered by hoarfrost, and winter grinning through the gaps in the clouds like a bad clown peering through the curtains before the show begins.”

John Connolly, Unquiet, Simon & Schuster, New York, NY, 2007, p. 21
"
— John Connolly

"It's not about right. It's not about wrong. It's about power."
— The First

"I'm beyond tired. I'm beyond scared. I'm standing on the mouth of Hell and it is going to swallow me whole. And it'll choke on me. We're not ready? They're not ready. They think we're gonna wait for the end to come, like we always do. I'm done waiting. They want an apocalypse? Well, we'll give 'em one. Anyone else who wants to run, do it now, 'cause we just became an army. We just declared war. From now on, we won't just face our worst fears, we will seek them out. We will find them, and cut out their hearts, one by one, until the First shows itself for what it really is. And I'll kill it myself. There is only one thing on this earth more powerful than evil. And that's us."
— Buffy

"The earth was blue but there was no god."
— Yuri Gagarin

"Two roads...
Split off from here,
and my life goes running in opposite directions.
Exaggerating the barrier between who I am
and who I want to...

Which part of me is left?
I feel so close,
and yet I am so far.
Which part of me is lost?
I feel so close,
and yet I am so.... FAR!!!"
— Sonny Moore

"I do no believe in love at first sight because it can only be based on physical attraction, which is not love at all. Love is something that needs to be developed and takes time."
— Julius R. T. Kellinghusen

"It took me a long time, my lifetime so to speak, to realise that the colour of an eye half seen, or the source of some distant sound, are closer to Giudecca in the hell of unknowing than the existence of God, or the origins of protoplasm, or the eistence of self, and even less worthy than these to occupy the wise, It's a bit much, a lifetime, to achieve this consoling conclusion, it doesn't leave you much time to profit by it."
— Samuel Beckett

"He speaks in your voice, American, and there's a shine in his eye that's halfway hopeful."
— Don DeLillo

"Osby wasn't considered the smartest man in Eads County. But the no one . . . knew him well enough to realize that he wasn't all that far from it either."
— Josh Weil (The New Valley)

"What a lark! What a plunge!"
— Virginia Woolf (Mrs. Dalloway)

"I.
My first thought was, he lied in every word,
That hoary cripple, with malicious eye
Askance to watch the workings of his lie
On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford
Suppression of the glee, that pursed and scored
Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby.

II.
What else should he be set for, with his staff?
What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare
All travellers who might find him posted there,
And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh
Would break, what crutch 'gin write my epitaph
For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare.

III.
If at his counsel I should turn aside
Into that ominous tract which, all agree,
Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly
I did turn as he pointed, neither pride
Now hope rekindling at the end descried,
So much as gladness that some end might be.

IV.
For, what with my whole world-wide wandering,
What with my search drawn out through years, my hope
Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope
With that obstreperous joy success would bring,
I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring
My heart made, finding failure in its scope.

V.
As when a sick man very near to death
Seems dead indeed, and feels begin and end
The tears and takes the farewell of each friend,
And hears one bit the other go, draw breath
Freelier outside, ('since all is o'er,' he saith
And the blow fallen no grieving can amend;')

VI.
When some discuss if near the other graves
be room enough for this, and when a day
Suits best for carrying the corpse away,
With care about the banners, scarves and staves
And still the man hears all, and only craves
He may not shame such tender love and stay.

VII.
Thus, I had so long suffered in this quest,
Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ
So many times among 'The Band' to wit,
The knights who to the Dark Tower's search addressed
Their steps - that just to fail as they, seemed best,
And all the doubt was now - should I be fit?

VIII.
So, quiet as despair I turned from him,
That hateful cripple, out of his highway
Into the path he pointed. All the day
Had been a dreary one at best, and dim
Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim
Red leer to see the plain catch its estray.

IX.
For mark! No sooner was I fairly found
Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two,
Than, pausing to throw backwards a last view
O'er the safe road, 'twas gone; grey plain all round;
Nothing but plain to the horizon's bound.
I might go on, naught else remained to do.

X.
So on I went. I think I never saw
Such starved ignoble nature; nothing throve:
For flowers - as well expect a cedar grove!
But cockle, spurge, according to their law
Might propagate their kind with none to awe,
You'd think; a burr had been a treasure trove.

XI.
No! penury, inertness and grimace,
In some strange sort, were the land's portion. 'See
Or shut your eyes,' said Nature peevishly,
It nothing skills: I cannot help my case:
'Tis the Last Judgement's fire must cure this place
Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free.' "
— Robert Browning

""I hate and I love. And if you ask me how, I do not know: I only feel it, and I am torn in two.""
— Catullus

"Memory is a magpie after chips of colored glass and ribbon rather than the upright accuracy of objective sequence."
— Larry Woiwode

"Mourning your first love is as important as meeting your first love. It's the whole cycle."
— Jane Anderson

"One's first love is always perfect until one meets one's second love"
— Elizabeth Aston (The Exploits & Adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy: A Novel)

"When I buy a new book, I always read the last page first, that way incase I die, before I finish, I know how it ends. That my friend is a dark side."
— Nora Ephron (When Harry Met Sally)

"It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him."
— Joseph Heller (Catch 22)

"Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature"
— Anita Brookner (Start In Life)

""the fear of error is the death of success""
— Douglas Wilder