Nicola Yoon

Everything's a risk. Not doing anything is a risk. It's up to you.

Maybe growing up means disappointing the people we love.

Spoiler alert: Love is worth everything. Everything.

Life is a gift. Don't forget to live it.

Just because you can’t experience everything doesn’t mean you shouldn’t experience anything.

You're not living if you're not regretting.

I was happy before I met him. But I’m alive now, and those are not the same thing.

Sometimes you do things for the right reasons and sometimes for the wrong ones and sometimes it’s impossible to tell the difference.

Wanting just leads to more wanting. There’s no end to desire.

Yukio Mishima

True beauty is something that attacks, overpowers, robs, and finally destroys.

What transforms this world is — knowledge. Do you see what I mean? Nothing else can change anything in this world. Knowledge alone is capable of transforming the world, while at the same time leaving it exactly as it is. When you look at the world with knowledge, you realize that things are unchangeable and at the same time are constantly being transformed.

Dreams, memories, the sacred--they are all alike in that they are beyond our grasp. Once we are even marginally separated from what we can touch, the object is sanctified; it acquires the beauty of the unattainable, the quality of the miraculous. Everything, really, has this quality of sacredness, but we can desecrate it at a touch. How strange man is! His touch defiles and yet he contains the source of miracles.

Perfect purity is possible if you turn your life into a line of poetry written with a splash of blood.

Beauty is something that burns the hand when you touch it.

Young people get the foolish idea that what is new for them must be new for everybody else too. No matter how unconventional they get, they're just repeating what others before them have done.

Ursula K. Le Guin II

The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.

Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.

The creative adult is the child who has survived.

People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.

It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.

We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel... is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.

We're each of us alone, to be sure. What can you do but hold your hand out in the dark?

When you light a candle, you also cast a shadow.

What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?

Nobody who says, ‘I told you so’ has ever been, or will ever be, a hero.

To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.

Jostein Gaarder

Wisest is she who knows she does not know.

How terribly sad it was that people are made in such a way that they get used to something as extraordinary as living.

It's not a silly question if you can't answer it.

A joker is a little fool who is different from everyone else. He's not a club, diamond, heart, or spade. He's not an eight or a nine, a king or a jack. He is an outsider. He is placed in the same pack as the other cards, but he doesn't belong there. Therefore, he can be removed without anybody missing him.

Life is both sad and solemn. We are led into a wonderful world, we meet one another here, greet each other - and wander together for a brief moment. Then we lose each other and disappear as suddenly and unreasonably as we arrived.

When you realize there is something you don't understand, then you're generally on the right path to understanding all kinds of things.

A state that does not educate and train women is like a man who only trains his right arm.

As long as we are children, we have the ability to experience things around us--but then we grow used to the world. To grow up is to get drunk on sensory experience.

Superstitious." What a strange word. If you believed in Christianity or Islam, it was called "faith". But if you believed in astrology or Friday the thirteenth it was superstition! Who had the right to call other people's belief superstition?

Rainbow Rowell

Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.

Holding Eleanor's hand was like holding a butterfly. Or a heartbeat. Like holding something complete, and completely alive.

I want everyone to meet you. You're my favorite person of all time.

I don’t trust anybody. Not anybody. And the more that I care about someone, the more sure I am they’re going to get tired of me and take off.

In new situations, all the trickiest rules are the ones nobody bothers to explain to you. (And the ones you can't Google.)

To really be a nerd, she'd decided, you had to prefer fictional worlds to the real one.

What are the chances you’d ever meet someone like that? he wondered. Someone you could love forever, someone who would forever love you back? And what did you do when that person was born half a world away? The math seemed impossible.

Pythagoras II

As long as Man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings, he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.

Be silent or let thy words be worth more than silence

If there be light, then there is darkness; if cold, heat; if height, depth; if solid, fluid; if hard, soft; if rough, smooth; if calm, tempest; if prosperity, adversity; if life, death.

No one is free who has not obtained the empire of himself. No man is free who cannot command himself.

Do not say a little in many words, but a great deal in few!

There is geometry in the humming of the strings. There is music in the spacing of the spheres. 

Educate the children and it won't be necessary to punish the men.

Rest satisfied with doing well, and leave others to talk of you as they please.

In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.

The oldest, shortest words— "yes" and "no"— are those which require the most thought.

It is only necessary to make war with five things; with the maladies of the body, the ignorances of the mind, with the passions of the body, with the seditions of the city and the discords of families.

Akira Kurosawa

In a mad world, only the mad are sane.

Man is a genius when he is dreaming.

To be an artist means never to avert one's eyes.

People today have forgotten they're really just a part of nature. Yet, they destroy the nature on which our lives depend. They always think they can make something better. Especially scientists. They may be smart, but most don't understand the heart of nature. They only invent things that, in the end, make people unhappy. Yet they're so proud of their inventions. What's worse, most people are, too. They view them as if they were miracles. They worship them. They don't know it, but they're losing nature. They don't see that they're going to perish. The most important things for human beings are clean air and clean water.

I can’t afford to hate anyone. I don’t have that kind of time.

The role of the artist is to not look away.

Julie Kagawa

Oh, we're playing nice now? Shall we have tea first? Brew up a nice pot of kiss-my-ass?

My name is Ashallyn'darkmyr Tallyn, third son of the Unseelie Court...Let it be known--from this day forth, I vow to protect Meghan Chase, daughter of the Summer King, with my sword, my honor, and my life. Her desires are mine. Her wishes are mine. Should even the world stand against her, my blade will be at her side. And should it fail to protect her, let my own existence be forfeit. This I swear, on my honor, my True Name, and my life. From this day on..." His voice went even softer, but I still heard it as though he whispered it into my ear. "I am yours.

Touch her, and I'll freeze your testicles off and put them in a jar. Understand?

You are my heart, my life, my entire existence.

Ladies and Felines," he stated grandly, grasping the doorknob, "Welcome to Tir Na Nog. Land of endless winter and shitloads of snow.

Bravo," said Grimalkin, peering down from Cold Tom's chest. "The Winter prince and Oberon's jester agreeing on something. The world must be ending.

John Rogers

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of  the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

You don't really understand an antagonist until you understand why he's a protagonist in his own version of the world.

You can’t think yourself out of a writing block; you have to write yourself out of a thinking block.

Your health is the most important commodity that you have. Without it, everything will fall apart - relationships, financial wellbeing, career, school, and so on. It is very important to take good care of yourself.

Never let others dictate the directions that you pick in your life since they are not the ones living your life.

Alan Lightman

Suppose time is a circle, bending back on itself. The world repeats itself, precisely, endlessly.

The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in a time of pain or of joy. The tragedy of this world is that everyone is alone. For a life in the past cannot be shared with the present. Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone.

The tragedy of this world is that everyone is alone. For a life in the past cannot be shared with the present.

If a person holds no ambitions in this world, he suffers unknowingly. If a person holds ambitions, he suffers knowingly, but very slowly.

The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in a time of pain or joy.

Some say it is best not to go near the center of time. Life is a vessel of sadness, but is noble to live life and without time there is no life. Others disagree. They would rather have an eternity of contentment, even if that eternity were fixed and frozen, like a butterfly mounted in a case.

For it is only habit and memory that dulls the physical passion. Without memory, each night is the first night, each morning is the first morning, each kiss and touch are the first.