“War is peace.”

“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.”

“Sarcasm is the last refuge of the imaginatively bankrupt.”

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

“Not my daughter, you bitch!”

“If pain must come, may it come quickly. I have a life to live, and I need to live it in the best way possible. If he has to make a choice, may he make it now. Then I will either wait for him or forget him.”

“The town was paper, but the memories were not.”

“He is half of my soul, as the poets say.”

“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”

“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.”

“Truth is stranger than fiction, because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn't.”

“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.”

“What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”

“If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery, isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is.”

“"You haven't got a letter on yours," George observed. "I suppose she thinks you don't forget your name. But we're not stupid — we know we're called Gred and Forge."”

“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.”

“Stupid people are dangerous.”

“I wonder how many people I've looked at all my life and never seen.”

“I lie to myself all the time. But I never believe me.”

“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.'”

“Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”

“Show me a hero, and I'll write you a tragedy.”

“"Wow," Thalia muttered. "Apollo is hot."”

“And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone.”

“If you look for perfection, you'll never be content.”

“Being crazy isn't enough.”

“Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I've ever known.”

“Angry people are not always wise.”

“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.”

“I have never listened to anyone who criticized my taste in space travel, sideshows or gorillas. When this occurs, I pack up my dinosaurs and leave the room.”

“The boy never cried again, and he never forgot what he had learned: that to love is to destroy, and that to be loved is to be the one destroyed.”

“That does it. I'm going to get you a dictionary for Christmas this year.”

“You said you were going for a walk! What kind of walk takes six hours?”

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

“Fiction is the truth inside the lie.”

“We're all seeking that special person who is right for us. But if you've been through enough relationships, you begin to suspect there's no right person, just different flavors of wrong. Why is this? Because you yourself are wrong in some way, and you seek out partners who are wrong in some complementary way. But it takes a lot of living to grow fully into your own wrongness. And it isn't until you finally run up against your deepest demons, your unsolvable problems, the ones that make you truly who you are, that we're ready to find a lifelong mate. Only then do you finally know what you're looking for. You're looking for the wrong person. But not just any wrong person: it's got to be the right wrong person, someone you lovingly gaze upon and think, 'This is the problem I want to have.'”

“I did not attend his funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.”

“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.”

“The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.”

“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”

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

“It hurts to let go. Sometimes it seems the harder you try to hold on to something or someone the more it wants to get away. You feel like some kind of criminal for having felt, for having wanted. For having wanted to be wanted. It confuses you, because you think that your feelings were wrong and it makes you feel so small because it's so hard to keep it inside when you let it out and it doesn't come back. You're left so alone that you can't explain. Damn, there's nothing like that, is there? I've been there and you have too. You're nodding your head.”