“It always shocked me when I realized that I wasn't the only person in the world who thought and felt such strange and awful things.”

“A brave man acknowledges the strength of others.”

“There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.”

“The minute I heard my first love story,”

“It has been said, 'time heals all wounds.' I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone.”

“Life is for the living.”

“Break my heart. Break it a thousand times if you like. It was only ever yours to break anyway.”

“We live for books.”

“What are men to rocks and mountains?”

“Begin at the beginning, the King said very gravely, and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”

“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”

“People think dreams aren't real just because they aren't made of matter, of particles. Dreams are real. But they are made of viewpoints, of images, of memories and puns and lost hopes.”

“Only a true best friend can protect you from your immortal enemies.”

“I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between.”

“And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.”

“The silence depressed me. It wasn't the silence of silence. It was my own silence.”

“In heaven, all the interesting people are missing.”

“Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.”

“Do not fear being eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.”

“None but ourselves can free our minds.”

“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.”

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”

“There is a loneliness in this world so great.”

“Sometimes our light goes out, but is blown again into instant flame by an encounter with another human being.”

“How many slams in an old screen door? Depends how loud you shut it. How many slices in a bread? Depends how thin you cut it. How much good inside a day? Depends how good you live 'em. How much love inside a friend? Depends how much you give 'em.”

“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.”

“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”

“What I say is, a town isn't a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it's got a bookstore, it knows it's not foolin' a soul.”

“Beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful.”

“Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.”

“When love is not madness, it is not love.”

“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”

“God has no religion.”

“It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.”

“This moment will just be another story someday.”

“That's the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.”

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

“It's all right to love someone who doesn't love you back, as long as they're worth you loving them. As long as they deserve it.”

“It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn't use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like "What about lunch?"”

“No mourners. No funerals. Among them, it passed for "good luck."”

“I don't want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again.”

“Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.”

“Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.”

“There are wounds that never show on the body, that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.”

“Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.”

“Don't grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.”

“Sometimes you make choices in life and sometimes choices make you.”

“If you go home with somebody, and they don't have books, don't fuck 'em!”

“Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.”

“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.”