“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”

“The more I see, the less I know for sure.”

“I read a book one day and my whole life was changed.”

“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity.”

“We all have our time machines, don't we? Those that take us back are memories, and those that carry us forward are dreams.”

“There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars.”

“François Rabelais was a poet. His last words were, 'I go to seek a Great Perhaps.' That's why I'm going. So I don't have to wait until I die to start seeking a Great Perhaps.”

“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.”

“It was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone. They could be honest with me, and I with them.”

“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.”

“To see a world in a grain of sand.”

“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.”

“Everything tells me that I am about to make a wrong decision, but making mistakes is just part of life. What does the world want of me? Does it want me to take no risks, to go back to where I came from because I didn't have the courage to say "yes" to life?”

“Forever is composed of nows.”

“I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self-respect. And it's these things I'd believe in, even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn't all she should be. I love her and it is the beginning of everything.”

“When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.”

“No thief, however skillful, can rob one of knowledge, and that is why knowledge is the best and safest treasure to acquire.”

“Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it's a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it's a way of making contact with someone else's imagination after a day that's all too real.”

“Reading one book is like eating one potato chip.”

“Treat everyone with politeness and kindness, not because they are nice, but because you are.”

“Believe in your heart.”

“It's amazing how a little tomorrow can make up for a whole lot of yesterday.”

“The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can't be any large-scale revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an individual level. It's got to happen inside first.”

“Some things don't last forever, but some things do. Like a good song, or a good book, or a good memory you can take out and unfold in your darkest times, pressing down on the corners and peering in close, hoping you still recognize the person you see there.”

“She wasn't bitter. She was sad, though. But it was a hopeful kind of sad. The kind of sad that just takes time.”

“The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider freeways but narrower viewpoints. We spend more but have less; we buy more but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge but less judgment, more experts yet more problems, more medicine but less wellness.”

“Music is a total constant. That's why we have such a strong visceral connection to it, you know? Because a song can take you back instantly to a moment, or a place, or even a person. No matter what else has changed in you or the world, that one song says the same, just like that moment.”

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

“Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow; it empties today of its strength.”

“Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.”

“It's kind of fun to do the impossible.”

“Find what you love and let it kill you.”

“There is no real ending. It's just the place where you stop the story.”

“All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.”

“Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.”

“He thinks he'll be remembered as the villain in the story. But I forgot to tell him that the villain is usually the person who locks up the maiden and throws away the key. He was the one who let me out.”

“There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.”

“I think we dream so we don’t have to be apart for so long. If we’re in each other’s dreams, we can be together all the time.”

“I suspect the truth is that we are waiting, all of us, against insurmountable odds, for something extraordinary to happen to us.”

“Weeds are flowers, too, once you get to know them.”

“I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.”

“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”

“People aren't born good or bad. Maybe they're born with tendencies either way, but it's the way you live your life that matters.”

“To the stars who listen—and the dreams that are answered.”

“If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.”

“I was smiling yesterday, I am smiling today, and I will smile tomorrow. Simply because life is too short to cry for anything.”

“I'd said it before and meant it: Alive or undead, the love of my life was a badass.”

“I love you more than there are stars in the sky and fish in the sea.”

“There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.”

“Learn to light a candle in the darkest moments of someone’s life. Be the light that helps others see; it is what gives life its deepest significance.”