“I am a badass, and I recognize that you, too, are a badass.”

“My daddy said that the first time you fall in love, it changes you forever, and no matter how hard you try, that feeling never goes away.”

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

“Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.”

“I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.”

“My ambition is handicapped by laziness.”

“There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life. Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget that, until the day God deigns to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words: 'Wait and hope.'”

“You know, you could live a thousand lifetimes and not deserve him.”

“It may be unfair, but what happens in a few days, sometimes even a single day, can change the course of a whole lifetime.”

“When I was five years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down 'happy'. They told me I didn't understand the assignment, and I told them they didn't understand life.”

“What happens when people open their hearts?”

“Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.”

“Peter would probably throw a party if I stopped breathing.”

“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.”

“Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.”

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

“Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.”

“It kills me sometimes, how people die.”

“The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too.”

“It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.”

“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”

“Books are my friends, my companions. They make me laugh and cry and find meaning in life.”

“Think before you speak. Read before you think.”

“Love doesn't just sit there like a stone; it has to be made like bread, remade all the time, made new.”

“I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.”

“I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.”

“Nobody can hurt me without my permission.”

“If you love somebody, let them go. If they return, they were always yours. If they don't, they never were.”

“What is an "instant" death anyway? How long is an instant? Is it one second? Ten? The pain of those seconds must have been awful as her heart burst and her lungs collapsed and there was no air and no blood to her brain and only raw panic. What the hell is instant? Nothing is instant. Instant rice takes five minutes, instant pudding an hour. I doubt that an instant of blinding pain feels particularly instantaneous.”

“Each day means a new twenty-four hours. Each day means everything's possible again. You live in the moment, you die in the moment, you take it all one day at a time.”

“I don't want to lose the boy with the bread.”

“There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense.”

“Everybody has a secret world inside of them. I mean everybody. All of the people in the whole world, I mean everybody, no matter how dull and boring they are on the outside. Inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe.”

“None of us really changes over time. We only become more fully what we are.”

“It isn't what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.”

“Some tourists think Amsterdam is a city of sin, but in truth it is a city of freedom. And in freedom, most people find sin.”

“It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.”

“People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It’s all in how you carry it. That’s what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain.”

“Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one's weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.”

“You get a little moody sometimes, but I think that's because you like to read. People who like to read are always a little fucked up.”

“Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet.”

“Beneath the makeup and behind the smile I am just a girl who wishes for the world.”

“"Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, \"Wow! What a ride!\""”

“Do what is right, not what is easy nor what is popular.”

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

“Simplicity, patience, compassion.”

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”

“What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again.”

“I don't mind living in a man's world, as long as I can be a woman in it.”

“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”