“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?”

“And I like large parties. They're so intimate. At small parties there isn't any privacy.”

“Why are women so much more interesting to men than men are to women?”

“Some birds are not meant to be caged, that's all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go, or when you open the cage to feed them they somehow fly out past you. And the part of you that knows it was wrong to imprison them in the first place rejoices, but still, the place where you live is that much more drab and empty for their departure.”

“Forever is composed of nows.”

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”

“That's part of what I like about the book in some ways. It portrays death truthfully. You die in the middle of your life, in the middle of a sentence.”

“You're wishin' too much, baby. You gotta stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone oughtta be.”

“He's a wallflower. You see things. You keep quiet about them. And you understand.”

“If you're lonely when you're alone, you're in bad company.”

“Learn what is to be taken seriously and laugh at the rest.”

“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.”

“War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”

“Books. Cats. Life is good.”

“Why didn't I learn to treat everything like it was the last time? My greatest regret was how much I believed in the future.”

“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.”

“Some say the world will end in fire,”

“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.”

“Don't be afraid of your fears. They're not there to scare you. They're there to let you know that something is worth it.”

“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.”

“Start each day with a positive thought and a grateful heart.”

“In the end, one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.”

“A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.”

“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.”

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

“Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”

“And so it goes...”

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

“Can I help you with something?”

“It's not the load that breaks you down, it's the way you carry it.”

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

“I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.”

“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.”

“It's enough for me to be sure that you and I exist at this moment.”

“I am coming to terms with the fact that loving someone requires a leap of faith, and that a soft landing is never guaranteed.”

“And the rest is rust and stardust.”

“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.”

“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.”

“If a relationship can't survive the long term, why would it be worth my time and energy for the short term?”

“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.”