Books

"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show." --David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

"What is hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who once mattered the most to us are wrapped up in parantheses." --The Cider House Rules by John Irving (429)

"Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have at this hour to stand by: there I plant my foot." --Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

"It is like the first disinterested sigh a lover sends over the telephone wires, the sigh that signals the earliest beginning of the end." --The Hours by Michael Cunningham (178)

"If people knew the story of their lives how many would then elect to live them?" --The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy (387)

"The scariest moment is always just before you start. After that, things can only get better." --On Writing by Stephen King (269)

"Sentenced to my life for however long God feels like laughing." --Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros

"She drew them away, and he turned to the door, found his coat and hat under the faint gas-light of the hall, and plunged out into the winter night bursting with the belated eloquence of the inarticulate." --The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (92)

"Fate is an obligation I don't understand--the reasons that random beast passed over her deserving soul in favor of mine." --Catfish and Mandala by Andrew X. Pham

"War is always about betrayal, betrayal of the young by the old, of idealists by cynics and of troops by politicians." --Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer, quoting "A Culture of Atrocity" by Chris Hedges

"Well, they bill by the minute, these lawyers, just like the cheaper whores." --The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (292)

"In my experience, the most staunchly held views are based on ignorance or accepted dogma, not carefully considered accumulations of facts." --Spook by Mary Roach (18)

"To all those who lead monotonous lives in the hope that they may experience at second hand the delights and dangers of adventure." The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie

"The most important things are the hardest to say, because words diminish them." --Stephen King