"Tell the truth, or someone will tell it for you."
— Stephanie Klein (Straight up and Dirty)

"In life you'll meet a lot of jerks. If they hurt you, tell yourself that it's because they're stupid. That will help keep you from reacting to their cruelty. Because there is nothing worse than bitterness and vengeance... Always keep your dignity and be true to yourself."
— Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis 1: The Story of a Childhood)

"I start to see that I surround myself with broken people; more broken than me. Ah, yes, let me count your cracks. Let's see, one hundred, two... yes, you'll do nicely. A cracked companion makes me look more whole, gives me something outside myself to care for. When I'm with whole, healed people I feel my own cracks, the shatters, the insanities of dislocation in myself."
— Julie Gregory (Sickened: The Memoir of a Munchausen by Proxy Childhood)

""In the English language, it all comes down to this: Twenty-six letters, when combined correctly, can create magic. Twenty -six letters form the foundation of a free, informed society.""
— John Grogan (Bad Dogs Have More Fun: And Other Tails of Animals, Life and Family)

"Her lips full and inviting, she has an infectious laugh and glassy cackle in her eyes, and a 2000 volt sexual charisma that beckons me like a fluff girl on scuffed knees."
— Brett Tate

"Your heart is the size of your fist; keep loving, keep fighting."
— Ariel Gore (Atlas of the Human Heart: A Memoir)

"I'm often asked what I think about as I run. Usually the people who ask this have never run long distances themselves. I always ponder the question. What exactly do I think about when I'm running? I don't have a clue."
— Haruki Murakami (What I Talk About When I Talk About Running)

"For the first time I realized adults could back themselves into corners so remote that love, or its memory, could no longer reach them."
— Kirby Wright (Moloka'i Nui Ahina, Summers on the Lonely Isle)

"Whatever it takes to break your heart and wake you up is grace."
— Mark Matousek (Sex Death Enlightenment: A True Story)

"'You are putting yourself in serious danger...'

I think that I preferred to put myself in serious danger rather than confront my shame. My shame at not having become someone, the shame of not having made my parents proud after all the sacrifices they had made for me. The shame of having become a mediocre nihilist."
— Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return)

"Staring at my smoldering hot date, her husband stands tall for the first time in a decade, adjusting his toupee while flashing a horrid green toothy grin that looks more like a Steven Hawkins muscle spasm. In his hands, a frightened beer bottle is choked with the steel grip of a sexually repressed Preacher."
— Brett Tate

"Tatiana is a ridiculously curvy thing of dreams, with smooth succulent thighs, long strawberry blond cascading beneath a teal bandana, and a nympho sparkle in her eyes that says pick me, lick me, spank me, or I punish you. Raw innocence and mayhem at once."
— Brett Tate

"Brett, who's the hottie waving at you from the hotel lobby bar?

Some cute mute. I hooked up with her sister last year, who by contrast would never shut the hell up. If I was drunk enough I'd bone her, but then I'd have to break her fingers so she doesn't tell her sister.

Brett, I think I'd prefer Russian dyevs to be mute. They have Ferrari for a mouth and Volkswagen for a brain. So tell me, how did it go down?

She walked up to me with a napkin that says "$200 for Sex."

What did you tell her?

Urrgghrruughrrruuughghhhgg. "
— Brett Tate

"In any case, it's the cowardice of people like you who give dictators the chance to install themselves!"
— Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return)

"So long as governments set the example of killing their enemies, private individuals will occasionally kill theirs."
— Elbert Hubbard (Elbert Hubbard's Scrap Book)

"In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it's wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices."
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

"A marriage, willy-nilly, requires you to trust that your spouse will tell your story truthfully and lovingly when you are no longer around to tell it yourself."
— Kate Braestrup (Here If You Need Me: A True Story)

"...if that energy could have been channelled into anything more than noise, waste and pain it would have lighted up Indochina for a thousand years."
— Michael Herr

"The morning opens, a mist of innocence appears across the countryside that tells each one of us the day is new. That feeling of hope, love and the humble awareness of our duty becomes clear if even for a moment. It is that experience of inspiration that follows us into a small town woken by a cool frost on this Sunday morning and the laughter of children playing.
"
— Kris Courtney

"I write so that my handful of pebbles, cast daily into still waters, will produce a ripple. "
— Anne Schroeder

"The Brit's face shares a heritage with a junkyard butt-sniffing mutt. It's a hard-earned moonshine mug, dotted with a hairy mole that looks like a rat's been gnawing on it. His beard looks like a white sneeze. The teeth are jagged and out of alignment, having opened quarts at Jiffy Quick Lube for half a decade."
— Brett Tate

"Unbefuckinglievable."
— Toby Young

"Sometimes I feel she hasn't left...especially when I wear the photo charm necklace with her picture in it.
I can't tell you how many young men have stared into that picture and the reaction is always the same: a slow beam rises across their faces and they want to know all about her.

They become entranced the way Dana Andrews did when he first saw Gene Tierney's portrait in "Laura." I know Maria finds all of this quite amusing; why shouldn't she? 'Laura' is her middle name."
— Pamela Palmer Mutino (Swish: Maria in the Mourning)

"If you can see it, you can achieve it. God helps those who helps themselves. Power is in the act of humility."
— Patricia Amis

"I had failed to make a gift of myself to God."
— Karen Armstrong (The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness)

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

"To me he seemed one of those persons destined to failure of whom you wonder what purpose it can ever serve that they should have ben born. "
— Maugham, W. Somerset (foreword & introduction)

"He had not even the self-complacency that enables stupid people to accept their mediocrity with unction; he had on the contrary an engaging modesty."
— Maugham W. Somerset

"To remember is to reenter and be riven -"
— Harold Brodky

"This is a work of memory -- facts have been altered. Names have been changed."
— Lavinia Greenlaw (The Importance of Music to Girls)

"Never in our silent moments of illusion do we sense the dark parallel that lives next to us. Nor do we suspect the carrier."
— Kris Courtney

"Write about small, self-contained incidents that are still vivid in your memory. If you remember them, it's because they contain a larger truth that your readers will recognize in their own lives. Think small and you'll wind up finding the big themes in your family saga. "
— William Zinsser

""Read a lot, write a lot is the great commandment." "
— Stephen King

"I recount as this journey begins where I rest to gather the tale from this
same old house resting on the hill, leaving me a view of a carnival once seen from just across the tracks. My pallet is dry now. The colors I see no more. The rain has washed away many of the signs that once stood for a prosper
home and family. My grave is waiting. The dreams once filled my head with
images of world unison, hope and companionship for all. The saga spoken
through my canvas drew darker as the years went on to the bitter cold nights.
All that comes to me now are glimpses of faces that graced my soul.
"
— Kris Courtney

""Ignore the misery. Custom invites you to ignore the misery."
SHOW YOUR TONGUE"
— Günter Grass

"Oh my!! How you've grown. Soon you'll be catching the Lord's balls."
— Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return)