“That's the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.”

“Everything is possible. The impossible just takes longer.”

“I have a theory that selflessness and bravery aren't all that different.”

“For you, a thousand times over.”

“Let everything happen to you.”

“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.”

“Read, read, read. Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.”

“Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don't be sorry.”

“We live and breathe words. It was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone. They could be honest with me, and I with them. Reading your words, what you wrote, how you were lonely sometimes and afraid, but always brave; the way you saw the world, its colors and textures and sounds, I felt, I felt the way you thought, hoped, felt, dreamt. I felt I was dreaming and thinking and feeling with you. I dreamed what you dreamed, wanted what you wanted, and then I realized that truly I just wanted you.”

“I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life's a bitch. You've got to go out and kick ass.”

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”

“You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope... I have loved none but you.”

“Don't let the expectations and opinions of others affect your decisions. It's your life, not theirs. Do what matters to you and what makes you feel alive and happy. Don't let other people's ideas limit who you are. If you let them tell you who you are, you will be living their reality, not yours. There is more to life than pleasing people or following someone else's prescribed path. Decide who you are for yourself. Become whole. Choose adventure.”

“Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding it.”

“By three methods we may learn wisdom: first, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third, by experience, which is the bitterest.”

“Faith is taking the first step even when you can't see the whole staircase.”

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

“Because nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff. Nerds are allowed to love stuff, like jump-up-and-down-in-the-chair can't-control-yourself love it. Hank, when people call people nerds, mostly what they're saying is 'you like stuff,' which is just not a good insult at all. Like, 'you are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness.'”

“You do not have to be good.”

“Books may well be the only true magic.”

“I read so I can live more than one life in more than one place.”

“You have to die a few times before you can really live.”

“Everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

“With freedom, flowers, books, and the moon, who could not be perfectly happy?”

“But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.”

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

“If music be the food of love, play on.”

“I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, "This is what it is to be happy."”

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”

“Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.”

“Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living; it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope.”

“The simple things are also the most extraordinary things, and only the wise can see them.”

“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”

“Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.”

“Life is too short to waste your time on people who don't respect, appreciate, and value you.”

“Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.”

“I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.”

“Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

“A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous.”

“Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?”

“It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.”

“That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.”

“Believe in yourself. You are braver than you think, more talented than you know, and capable of more than you imagine.”

“You do not write your life with words. You write it with actions. What you think is not important. It is only important what you do.”

“I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.”

“Respect other people's feelings. It might mean nothing to you, but it could mean everything to them.”

“What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.”

“In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.”

“You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.”

“Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world would do this, it would change the earth.”