Bohumil Hrabal

I pop a beautiful sentence into my mouth and suck it like a fruit drop.

I can be by myself because I'm never lonely; I'm simply alone, living in my heavily populated solitude, a harum-scarum of infinity and eternity, and Infinity and Eternity seem to take a liking to the likes of me.

Because when I read, I don't really read; I pop a beautiful sentence into my mouth and suck it like a fruit drop, or I sip it like a liqueur until the thought dissolves in me like alcohol, infusing brain and heart and coursing on through the veins to the root of each blood vessel.

No book worth its salt is meant to put you to sleep, it's meant to make you jump out of your bed in your underwear and run and beat the author's brains out.

Anna Sewell

It is good people who make good places.

If they strain me up tight, why, let 'em look out! I can't bear it, and I won't.

We call them dumb animals, and so they are, for they cannot tell us how they feel, but they do not suffer less because they have no words.

There is no religion without love, 
and people may talk as much as 
they like about their religion, but 
if it does not teach them to be good 
and kind to man and beast, 
it is all a sham.

Do you know why this world is as bad as it is?... It is because people think only about their own business, and won't trouble themselves to stand up for the oppressed, nor bring the wrong-doers to light... My doctrine is this, that if we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop, and do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt

My troubles are all over, and I am at home; and often before I am quite awake, I fancy I am still in the orchard at Birtwick, standing with my friends under the apple trees.

Katherine Boo

Much of what was said did not matter, and that much of what mattered could not be said.

What you don't want is always going to be with you
What you want is never going to be with you
Where you don't want to go, you have to go
And the moment you think you're going to live more, you're going to die”

It seemed to him that in Annawadi, fortunes derived not just from what people did, or how well they did it, but from the accidents and catastrophes they dodged. A decent life was the train that hadn’t hit you, the slumlord you hadn’t offended, the malaria you hadn’t caught.

I tell Allah I love Him immensely, immensely. But I tell Him I cannot be better, because of how the world is.

Your little boat goes west and you congratulate yourself, "What a navigator I am!" And then the wind blows you east.

Inga Muscio

Men who refuse to use condoms do not deserve to be fucked by anyone but other men who refuse to use condoms.

What happens to people living in a society where everyone in power is lying, stealing, cheating and killing, and in our hearts we all know this, but the consequences of facing all these lies are so monstrous, we keep on hoping that maybe the corporate government administration and media are on the level with us this time.
Americans remind me of survivors of domestic abuse.
This is always the hope that this is the very, very, very last time one's ribs get re-broken again.

Moving from phonetics to etymology, ‘vagina’ originates from a word meaning sheath for a sword. Ain’t got no vagina.

What if one out of every three multinational corporation CEO's were raped every year? Don't you think that would raise a kind of ruckus?

Iranian women are very consciously aware of gender-explicit oppression. Therefore: with so much more at stake, Iranian women have each other's back: on the street, in stores, at celebrations, everywhere.

Belle Aurora

Monsters don't always lurk in the shadows. Sometimes they hide in plain sight.

Books... I can’t live without books. To me, a book is better than any movie. All I need is a good book, my imagination, and I am set free. I’m in literature heaven.

I don't want a knight in shining armor.
I don't want a knight in scuffed armor.
I want his helmet to have dents. I want my knight to be real, and dark and savage. I want my knight to be a survivor. Someone who's been tested and got through his trails. Not some pussy in gleaming metal.

Can't help who you fall in love with, princess.

We're all addicted to something that takes away the pain.

Not everyone can be a fairy-tale hero.” He pauses a moment, then adds, “The world needs villains too."

Who were you before people started telling you who you should be?

Chuck Palahniuk II

It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.

The one you love and the one who loves you are never, ever the same person.

All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring.

We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.

It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything

What I want is to be needed. What I need is to be indispensable to somebody. Who I need is somebody that will eat up all my free time, my ego, my attention. Somebody addicted to me. A mutual addiction.

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

I don't want to die without any scars.

The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open.

The unreal is more powerful than the real. Because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. Because its only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on. If you can change the way people think. The way they see themselves. The way they see the world. You can change the way people live their lives. That's the only lasting thing you can create.

Art Spiegelman

To die, it's easy. But you have to struggle for life.

Comics are a gateway drug to literacy.

Samuel Beckett once said, "Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness."

Sometimes I don't feel like a functioning adult.

Disaster is my muse.

I know this is insane, but I somehow wish I had been in Auschwitz with my parents so I could really know what they lived through! I guess it's some kind of guilt about having had an easier life than they did.

Yes, life always takes the side of life, and somehow the victims are blamed. But it wasn’t the best people who survived, nor did the best ones die. It was random!

In reality, childhood is deep and rich. It's vital, mysterious, and profound. I remember my OWN childhood vividly; I knew terrible things, but I knew I mustn't let the adults *know* I knew... it would scare them.

Nina George

Books are more than doctors, of course. Some novels are loving, lifelong companions; some give you a clip around the ear; others are friends who wrap you in warm towels when you've got those autumn blues. And some...well, some are pink candy floss that tingles in your brain for three seconds and leaves a blissful voice. Like a short, torrid love affair.

We cannot decide to love. We cannot compel anyone to love us. There's no secret recipe, only love itself. And we are at its mercy--there's nothing we can do.

Loving requires so much courage and so little expectation.

Memories are like wolves. You can’t lock them away and hope they leave you alone.

Perdu reflected that is was a common misconception that booksellers looked after books. They look after people.

Reading—an endless journey; a long, indeed never-ending journey that made one more temperate as well as more loving and kind.

With all due respect, what you read is more important in the long term than the man you marry, ma chère Madame.

All the love, all the dead, all the people we've known. They are the rivers that feed our sea of souls. If we refuse to remember them, that sea will dry up too.

Barry Lyga

You won't even know you've crossed the line until it's way back in your rearview mirror.

This is why I forgive, but I don't forget. When you forget someone, the forgiveness doesn't mean anything anymore.

Medicine cabinets are dangerous. Those doors, man. They'll just spring on you like a ninja.

Anger and hatred, when left unfed, bleed away like air from a punctured tire, over time and days and years. Forgiveness is stealth.

What if a puppet could cut its own strings, and in that act of defiance and strength of will become truly alive? Become is own puppetmaster

See, forgiveness doesn't happen all at once. It's not an event -- it's a process. Forgiveness happens while you're asleep, while you're dreaming, while you're inline at the coffee shop, while you're showering, eating, farting, jerking off. It happens in the back of your mind, and then one day you realize that you don't hate the person anymore, that your anger has gone away somewhere. And you understand. You've forgiven them. You don't know how or why. It sneaked up on you. It happened in the small spaces between thoughts and in the seconds between ideas and blinks. That's where forgiveness happens. Because anger and hatred, when left unfed, bleed away like air from a punctured tire, over time and days and years. Forgiveness is stealth. At least, that's what I hope.

Abraham Verghese

The key to your happiness is to own your slippers, own who you are, own how you look, own your family, own the talents you have, and own the ones you don't. If you keep saying your slippers aren't yours, then you'll die searching, you'll die bitter, always feeling you were promised more. Not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny.

Wasn't that the definition of home? Not where you are from, but where you are wanted.

God will judge us, Mr. Harris, by--by what we did to relieve the suffering of our fellow human beings. I don't think God cares what doctrine we embrace.

The world turns on our every action, and our every omission, whether we know it or not.

Life, too, is like that. You live it forward, but understand it backward. It is only when you stop and look to the rear that you see the corpse caught under your wheel.

Make something beautiful of your life.

We are all fixing what is broken. It is the task of a lifetime. We'll leave much unfinished for the next generation.

Not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny.