José Saramago

If I'm sincere today, what does it matter if I regret it tomorrow?

Words were not given to man in order to conceal his thoughts.

Inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are.

I don't think we did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see.

Chaos is merely order waiting to be deciphered.

The difficult thing isn't living with other people, it's understanding them.

We use words to understand each other and even, sometimes, to find each other.

Forgive me if what has seemed little to you, to me is all.

Words that come from the heart are never spoken, they get caught in the throat and can only be read in ones's eyes.

Reading is probably another way of being in a place.

Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati

Quiet the mind, and the soul will speak.

When you plant a seed of love, it is you that blossoms.

Compassion is the religion of the heart.

Spiritual yearning is the homesickness of the soul.

It takes a lot of courage to be happy.

Breath with awareness is prana. Breath without awareness is just air.

There is no prayer greater than service.

Time creates history. Meditation creates the moment.

Katherine Paterson

Reading can be a road to freedom or a key to a secret garden, which, if tended, will transform all of life.

It's like the smarter you are, the more things can scare you.

You have to believe it and you hate it. I don't have to and I think it's beautiful.

It was up to him to pay back to the world in beauty and caring what Leslie had loaned him in vision and strength. 

She had tricked him. She had made him leave his old self behind and come into her world, and then before he was really at home in it but too late to go back, she had left him stranded there--like an astronaut wandering about on the moon. Alone.

Sometimes it seemed to him that his life was delicate as a dandelion. One little puff from any direction, and it was blown to bits.

All of us can think of a book... that we hope none of our children or any other children have taken off the shelf. But if I have the right to remove that book from the shelf - that work I abhor - then you also have exactly the same right and so does everyone else. And then we have no books left on the shelf for any of us.

Amy Plum

Besides the alternate universe offered by a book, the quiet space of a museum was my favorite place to go. My mom said I was an escapist at heart . . . that I preferred imaginary worlds to the real one. It’s true that I’ve always been able to yank myself out of this world and plunge myself into another.

Well, spit on my empty grave--if it ain't the attack of the Disney princesses!

I can't promise you an ordinary experience, Kate. I wish I could transform myself into a normal man and be there for you, always, without the trauma that defines my life as "the walking dead." Since that isn't possible, I can only reassure you that I will do everything in my power to make it up to you. To give you more than a normal boyfriend could. 
I have no idea what that will mean, exactly, but I'm looking forward to finding out. With you.

I have to warn you that my bedroom isn't the best place to stage an assault on me. It's where I'm at my weakest, with my bed a mere twenty feet away.

Stop flaunting your impeccable language skills, Vincent, help the girl to her feet and let her take her leave.

I spent the rest of the day in someone else's story. The rare moments that I put the book down, my own pain returned in burning stabs.

Sanaya Roman

Truly powerful people have great humility. They do not try to impress, they do not try to be influential. They simply are. People are magnetically drawn to them. They are most often very silent and focused, aware of their core selves. ... They never persuade, nor do they use manipulation or aggressiveness to get their way. They listen. If there is anything they can offer to assist you, they offer it; if not, they are silent.

People who love themselves come across as very loving, generous and kind; they express their self-confidence through humility, forgiveness and inclusiveness.

Whatever you appreciate and give thanks for will increase in your life.

Having inner peace means committing to letting go of self-criticism and self-doubt.

What you love is a sign from your higher self of what you are to do.

You do not need to pay attention to those voices within you that create pain, or make you feel less competent, smart or able.

Elif Shafak

Every true love and friendship is a story of unexpected transformation. If we are the same person before and after we loved, that means we haven't loved enough.

Books change us. Books save us. I know this because it happened to me.

Whatever happens in your life, no matter how troubling things might seem, do not enter the neighborhood of despair. Even when all doors remain closed, God will open up a new path only for you. Be thankful!

If we are the same person before and after we loved, that means we haven't loved enough.

Do not go with the flow. Be the flow.

How can love be worthy of its name if one selects solely the pretty things and leaves out the hardships? It is easy to enjoy the good and dislike the bad. Anybody can do that. The real challenge is to love the good and the bad together, not because you need to take the rough with the smooth but because you need to go beyond such descriptions and accept love in its entirety.

You see, unlike in the movies, there is no THE END sign flashing at the end of books. When I've read a book, I don't feel like I've finished anything. So I start a new one.

Thich Nhat Hanh

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

When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help. That's the message he is sending.”

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.

To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.

Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything - anger, anxiety, or possessions - we cannot be free.

People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.

People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child—our own two eyes. All is a miracle.

Ben Okri

Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger.

The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering.

This is what you must be like. Grow wherever life puts you down.

The law is simple. Every experience is repeated or suffered till you experience it properly and fully the first time.

We can redream this world and make the dream come real. Human beings are gods hidden from themselves. 

One human life is deeper than the ocean. Strange fishes and sea-monsters and mighty plants live in the rock-bed of our spirits. The whole of human history is an undiscovered continent deep in our souls. There are dolphins, plants that dream, magic birds inside us. The sky is inside us. The earth is in us.

Jonathan Stroud

According to some, heroic deaths are admirable things. I've never been convinced by this argument, mainly because, no matter how cool, stylish, composed, unflappable, manly, or defiant you are, at the end of the day you're also dead. Which is a little too permanent for my liking.

Freedom is an illusion. It always comes at a price.”

One magician demanded I show him an image of the love of his life. I rustled up a mirror.

A dozen more questions occurred to me. Not to mention twenty-two possible solutions to each one, sixteen resulting hypotheses and counter-theorems, eight abstract speculations, a quadrilateral equation, two axioms, and a limerick. That's raw intelligence for you.

Can you define "plan" as "a loose sequence of manifestly inadequate observations and conjectures, held together by panic, indecision, and ignorance"? If so, it was a very good plan.

And then, as if written by the hand of a bad novelist, an incredible thing happened.

Hey, we've all got problems, chum. I'm overly talkative. You look like a field of buttercups in a suit.

Watch where you leave your victims! I stubbed my toe on that.

That did it. I'd gone through a lot in the past few days. Everyone I met seemed to want a piece of me: djinn, magicians, humans...it made no difference. I'd been summoned, manhandled, shot at, captured, constricted, bossed about and generally taken for granted. And now, to cap it all, this bloke is joining in too, when all I'd been doing was quietly trying to kill him.

André Aciman

Most of us can't help but live as though we've got two lives to live, one is the mockup, the other the finished version, and then there are all those versions in between.

We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything - what a waste!

We had the stars, you and I. And this is given once only.

He came. He left. Nothing else had changed. I had not changed. The world hadn't changed. Yet nothing would be the same. All that remains is dreammaking and strange remembrance.

People who read are hiders. They hide who they are. People who hide don’t always like who they are.

Is it better to speak or die?

And on that evening when we grow older still we'll speak about these two young men as though they were two strangers we met on the train and whom we admire and want to help along. And we'll want to call it envy, because to call it regret would break our hearts.