“I don't want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there.”

“I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.”

“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.”

“Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.”

“You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices.”

“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”

“Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.”

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye.”

“The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive.”

“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.”

“Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure.”

“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”

“Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant filled with odd little waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don't always like.”

“Reading is one form of escape. Running for your life is another.”

“You may not be her first, her last, or her only. She loved before and she may love again. But if she loves you now, what else matters? She's not perfect, you aren't either, and the two of you may never be perfect together; but if she can make you laugh, cause you to think twice, and admit to being human and making mistakes, hold on to her and give her the most you can. She may not be thinking about you every second of the day, but she will give you a part of her that she knows you can break: her heart. So don't hurt her, don't change her, don't analyze, and don't expect more than she can give. Smile when she makes you happy, tell her when she makes you mad, and miss her when she's not there.”

“When adults say, "Teenagers think they are invincible" with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.”

“Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

“When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes.”

“If you judge people, you have no time to love them.”

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”

“Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.”

“Have you fallen in love with the wrong person yet?”

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

“We love the things we love for what they are.”

“Never laugh at live dragons.”

“We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

“The truth is everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.”

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”

“I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival.”

“Some people care too much. I think it's called love.”

“What you're supposed to do when you don't like a thing is change it. If you can't change it, change the way you think about it. Don't complain.”

“You can't force love, I realized. It's there or it isn't. If it's not there, you've got to be able to admit it. If it is there, you've got to do whatever it takes to protect the ones you love.”

“I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go; things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they're right; you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself; and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.”

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.”

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”

“I've never fooled anyone. I've let people fool themselves. They didn't bother to find out who and what I was. Instead they would invent a character for me. I wouldn't argue with them. They were obviously loving somebody I wasn't.”

“Never love anyone who treats you like you're ordinary.”

“I hope she'll be a fool — that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”

“Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.”

“It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.”

“I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.”

“If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”

“Sleep is good, he said, and books are better.”

“You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.”

“The marks humans leave are too often scars.”