What I mean is, things like that happen. They may seem might cruel and unfair, but that’s how life is a part of the time. But that isn’t the only way life is. A part of the time, it’s mighty good. And a man can’t afford to waste all the good part, worrying about the bad parts. That makes it all bad.
Fred Gipson, Old Yeller
It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
But my dear, so few things are fulfilled: what are most lives but a series of incomplete episodes.
Truman Capote, Other Voices, Other Rooms
The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it’s as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues.
Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures
When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults and they enter society, one of the politer names of hell. That is why we dread children, even if we love them. They show us the state of our decay.
Brian Aldiss, The Trillion Year Spree
People who are most afraid of their dreams convince themselves they don’t dream at all.
John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent
Above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you, because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.
Roald Dahl, The Minpins
I wonder how many people I’ve looked at all my life and never seen.
John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent
No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
The world needs more love at first sight.
Maggie Stiefvater, Shiver
Once a bitch always a bitch, what I say.
William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
All human beings search for either reasons to be good, or excuses to be bad.
Chuck Palahniuk, Tell-All
Changing the world is good for those who want their names in books. But being happy, that is for those who write their names in the lives of others, and hold the hearts of others as the treasure most dear.
Orson Scott Card, Children of the Mind
There comes a time in your life when you realize that if you don’t take the opportunity to be happy, you may never get another chance again.
Richard Russo, Empire Falls
No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
