Dec. 15, 2024, 5:45 p.m.
In the realm of literature, certain lines transcend the pages they inhabit, leaving an indelible mark on readers' minds. These memorable novel quotes capture profound truths, evoke deep emotions, and offer insights into the human experience. Whether whispered in love, declared in defiance, or mused in solitude, they have the power to resonate across time and space. In this exploration of 83 unforgettable quotes, we invite you to journey through the timeless tapestry of words woven by some of the greatest literary minds. Each quote, a testament to the enduring power of storytelling, promises to inspire, challenge, and provoke thought. Join us as we delve into these gems, each offering a glimpse into the worlds created by novelists who have shaped our understanding of life, love, and everything in between.
1. “I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse.” - Mario Puzo
2. “I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it calls itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defense the only arms I allow myself to use -- silence, exile, and cunning.” - James Joyce
3. “The novel cannot submit to authority.” - Julian Gough
4. “Be quick, but don't hurry.” - John Wooden
5. “The novel is a formidable mass, and it is so amorphous - no mountain in it to climb, no Parnassus or Helicon, not even a Pisgah. It is most distinctly one of the moister areas of literature - irrigated by a hundred rills and occasionally degenerating into a swamp. I do not wonder that the poets despise it, though they sometimes find themselves in it by accident. And I am not surprised at the annoyance of the historians when by accident it finds itself among them.” - E.M. Forster
6. “Please, touch me, I pray.” - Jess C. Scott
7. “For a moment, I wondered how different my life would have been had they been my parents, but I shook the thought away. I knew my father had done the best he could, and I had no regrets about the way I'd turned out. Regrets about the journey, maybe, but not the destination. Because however it had happened, I'd somehow ended up eating shrimp in a dingy downtown shack with a girl that I already knew I'd never forget.” - Nicholas Sparks
8. “The contract between the author and the reader is a game. And the game . . . is one of the greatest invetions of Western civilization: the game of telling stories, inventing characters, and creating the imaginary paradise of the individual, from whence no one can be expelled because, in a novel, no one owns the truth and everyone has the right to be heard and understood.” - Carlos Fuentes
9. “Houses are like books: so many of them around you, yet you only look at a few and visit or reside in fewer still.” - Milorad Pavic
10. “Isn't post-modernism really one big cover-up for the failure of the French to write a truly interesting novel ever since a sports car ate Albert Camus?” - John Leonard
11. “My head’ll explode if I continue with this escapism.” - Jess C. Scott
12. “He looks out the window at the falling snow, then turns and takes his wife in his arms, feeling grateful to be here even as he wonders what he is going to do with his life in strictly practical terms. For years he had trained himself to do one thing, and he did it well, but he doesn't know whether he wants to keep doing it for the rest of his life, for that matter, whether anyone will let him. He is still worrying when they go to bed.Feeling his wife's head nesting in the pillow below his shoulder, he is almost certain that they will find ways to manage. They've been learning to get by with less, and they'll keep learning. It seems to him as if they're taking a course in loss lately. And as he feels himself falling asleep he has an insight he believes is important, which he hopes he will remember in the morning, although it is one of those thoughts that seldom survive translation to the language of daylight hours: knowing that whatever plenty befalls them together or separately in the future, they will become more and more intimate with loss as the years accumulate, friends dying or slipping away undramatically into the crowded past, memory itself finally flickering and growing treacherous toward the end; knowing that even the children who may be in their future will eventually school them in the pain of growth and separation, as their own parents and mentors die off and leave them alone in the world, shivering at the dark threshold.” - Jay Mcinerney
13. “And life? Life itself? Was it perhaps only an infection, a sickening of matter? Was that which one might call the original procreation of matter only a disease, a growth produced by morbid stimulation of the immaterial? The first step toward evil, toward desire and death, was taken precisely then, when there took place that first increase in the density of the spiritual, that pathologically luxuriant morbid growth, produced by the irritant of some unknown infiltration; this, in part pleasurable, in part a motion of self-defense, was the primeval stage of matter, the transition from the insubstantial to the substance. This was the Fall.” - Thomas Mann
14. “تضع يديها على كتفي وتضغطني إلى الأسفل طالبةً مني أن أتربع على الأرض. أستجيب من دون أن أعرف مرادها. تجلس فوقي وتضع أصابعهاعلى قرعة رأسي. تبدو برأسها كالدجاجة المنحنية على صوص. "وْلُك شو عم تعملي، ليش مركّزة براسي متل البسينات؟" تضحك. "ولُك روق"، تقول. "عندك شاميّة كبيرة هون. نابقة لبرات راسك. منيح اللي ما جرحك الحلاق وهوي عم يحلقلك راسك". "وين وين؟"، أسألها. تستمر بالضحك. "ولُكْ ما بتعرف إنو عندك شامية؟ حدن ما بيعرف راسو؟" تنهض وهي تضحك عائدة إلى كمبيوترها، وأبقى أنا أكتشف رأسي لأول مرة. ” - هلال شومان
15. “فكَّرتُ أنني أستطيع أن أخلق مشهداً ملحميّاً ابتداءً من جورب معلّق على حبل غسيل.لا سحرة ولا غجر ولا بطريرك ولا جنرالات ولا شيء، ولا حتى مدينة متخيَّلة أو قرن يمر على العائلة الموصوفة. لا شيء من كل هذا. فقط جوارب، والأرجح أنها مخططة و.. مبللة.” - هلال شومان
16. “سألاحظ الأشخاص أسفل نافذتي الموجودة على يميني. البائع الذي يصبِّح على جاره علانيةً ويهمس شاتماً لما يدخل إلى محله. نسب التنزيلات الملصقة على واجهة محلات الألبسة وهي تكثر وتقل، تكبر وتصغر. زمير أبواق السيارات وزحمة الشارع. النزلاء في الفندق المقابل وهم يغلقون ستائر غرفهم. أسراب الحمام في سماء الشارع الضيق، تمر سويةً وترحل معاً بإشارة من رجل على سطح بناء قريب. تلك الجارة التي لا تنتبه إلى الستارة المفتوحة إلا بعد أن تخلع بنطالها، ويبين لباسها الداخلي. طاولة الطعام التي يتجمع عليها أفراد عائلة من ذووي الملامح الصامتة. الولد الشقي الذي يدخل رأسه في فتحة الدرابزين الحديدي وينادي لأخته كي تساعده في إخراج رأسه الذي علق. عادةً ما يستغرق الأمر خمس دقائق قبل أن تدخل الفتاة لتخبر أمها وتأتي الأم مستشيطة غضباً. سأشاهد الخادمة، سريلنكية الجنسية، وهي تتواصل مع صديقتها السريلنكية في البناية المقابلة. الكلمات في لغتهما الهجينة تمر في الفضاء بين البنايتين. سأتابع "سيدتها" وهي تخرج مجابهةً إياها بشتائم من العيار الثقيل، لأنها "تقلل من مستواها". ” - هلال شومان
17. “ لم يُكتب قط نصٌ في الدنيا إلا وكان له موسيقاه الخلفية.” - هلال شومان
18. “bla..bla..” - aisya sofea
19. “People go around mourning the death of God; it's the death of sssin that bothers me. Without ssin, people aren't people any more, they're just ssoul-less sheep.” - John Updike
20. “A novel takes the courage of a marathon runner, and as long as you have to run, you might as well be a winning marathon runner. Serendipity and blind faith faith in yourself won't hurt a thing. All the bastards in the world will snicker and sneer because they haven't the talent to zip up their flies by themselves. To hell with them, particularly the critics. Stand in there, son, no matter how badly you are battered and hurt.” - Leon Uris
21. “If she spoke, she would tell him the truth: she was not okay at all, but horribly empty, now that she knew what it was like to be filled.” - Jodi Picoult
22. “Millions cheer the warriorspilling blood across the ringwhile the one who stands for peaceis ridiculed and shamed.Must hearts forever sufferfrom ignorance and greed?Can bombs heal our soulsor set our spirits free?” - Aberjhani
23. “So...Mason, Eddie, and Mia went to Spokane to hunt Strigoi?""Yes.""Holy shit. Why didn't you go with them? Seems like something you'd do."I resisted the urge to smack him. "Because I'm not insane! But I'm going to go get them before they do something even stupider.” - Richelle Mead
24. “On my website there's a quote from the writer Anthony Burgess: "The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind." I've always found that inspiring because the written word, as an art form, is unlike any other: movies, TV, music, they're shared experiences, but books aren't like that. The relationship between a writer and a reader is utterly unique to those two individuals. The world that forms in your head as you read a book will be slightly different to that experienced by every other reader. Anywhere. Ever. Reading is very personal, a communication from one mind to another, something which can't be exactly copied, or replicated, or directly shared. If I read the work of, say, one of the great Victorian novelists, it's like a gift from the past, a momentary connection to another's thoughts. Their ideas are down on paper, to be picked up by me, over a century later. Writers can speak individually to readers across a year, or ten years, or a thousand. That's why I love books.” - Simon Cheshire
25. “I was flipping channels, watching this cheerleading program on MTV. They took a field hockey girl and “transformed” her into a cheerleader by the end of the show. I was just wondering: what if she liked field hockey better?” - Jess C. Scott
26. “There’s something so great about this,” she whispers. About what?” I whisper back.About this,” she whispers. About being outlaws. It’s just you and me—against the world.” - Sonya Sones
27. “إن التماس المعرفة أعظم ألوان التطهير” - محمد خضير
28. “The men were smashing windows and aiming their weapons through them. The driver had opened the door and was shouting for the women and children to get out and run and hide. But Ilina realized in some vague way that he never managed to actually say the word "hide." He really said, "Women and children, get out, get out, get out! Run and..." The clerk's wife thought it was odd that he had stopped in the middle of a sentence, and even stranger that she herself knew the word, heard the word "hide" in her head when the driver stopped talking.” - Clark Zlotchew
29. “Already, Seattle is taking hold of her. She still holds Sedona in the dry tan of her skin and in her hair, but the fine mist of the Northwest is making its way to places she didn’t know were parched.” - Susan Wiggs
30. “The sight of her made him understand why he'd lost his faith in God.” - Sarah Langan
31. “Sometimes I think it is my fate to live in the wreckage and confusion of crumbling houses.” - Abdulrazak Gurnah
32. “Truth is irrelevant; what matters is what people believe.” - Henry Mosquera
33. “عندما تصل إلى هواتفنا رسالة جديدة، غالبا لا تكون ممن ننتظره.” - محمد حامد
34. “كل الأشياء التي يمكن استبدالها جرم أن نبكي عليها!” - محمد حامد
35. “حدثني عنك واكذب في ذلك، أريد أن أعلم غير الحقيقة.” - محمد حامد
36. “...Love can give you the most exhilarating wonderful highs at times... ...Then there will be dives that will take all you have just to hold on... Quote on the Title Page of "Love TORN Asunder” - Elizabeth Funderbirk
37. “Si tuvieras que elegir entre la cordura, tu vida tal como la recuerdas, antes que la verdadera inestabilidad, ¿qué elegirías como manera adecuada para vivir de un estudioso?” - Elizabeth Kostova
38. “Amar es ponerse al cuello el nudo corredizo de la ilusión; adorar a alguien mientras pareces asfixiarte. Pero incluso el amor no correspondido, el amor fugaz, es mejor que nada.” - Susan Vreeland
39. “No sé, todavía qué es lo que separa el aprecio del amor.” - Jane Austen
40. “Any self-defense class worth its salt will tell you thatyou don’t pull out a weapon unless you intend to use it.The same should apply to ballsy remarks.” - Henry Mosquera
41. “I don’t care what Einstein said about God not playing dice; If he exists, he’s addicted to craps.” - Henry Mosquera
42. “Jika ada hal lain yang sangat menakjubkan di dunia ini selain cinta, adalah sepakbola.” - Andrea Hirata
43. “Kamu bener-bener selalu ngedapetin apa yang kamu mau ya?" | "Nggak semuanya. Karena aku belum memiliki kamu lagi." - Good Fight” - Christian Simamora
44. “The green-eyed angel came in less than a half hour and fell docile as a lamb into my arms. We kissed and caressed, I met no resistance when I unlaced the strings to free her dress and fill myself in the moist and hot bed nature made between her thighs. We made love outdoors—without a roof, I like most, without stove, my favorite place, assuming the weather be fair and balmy, and the earth beneath be clean. Our souls intertwined and dripping with dew, and our love for each other was seen. Our love for the world was new.” - Roman Payne
45. “A good novel begins with a small question and ends with a bigger one.” - Paula Fox
46. “Vane grabbed me. “DuLac, let’s chat.”Chat. British-speak for “Stand still while I yell at you.” - Priya Ardis
47. “Succede, a volte, di provare una grande attrazione per qualcuno che poco ha a che fare con i nostri valori, le nostre abitudini, le nostre passioni. Che sia chimica, follia, istinto animale poco importa. Ciò che importa è che spesso, invece di dare alle cose il proprio nome, ci si affanna a interpretarle nel modo più indolore possibile, per non mettere in discussione la propria dignità, per tener fede a dogmi e precetti dai quali ci si sta svincolando, senza volerlo ammettere. (…) Si forniscono alibi, giustificazioni, si cercano attinenze che non esistono ma alle quali ci si aggrappa come polpastrelli in una scalata che renderà difficile sgretolare poi la roccia, pena il precipizio.” - Cristina Obber
48. “The one thing is fiction in a novel and the other thing is reality. With fiction you don't make a fuss - you can 'beat it' and there's never enough. At least in my opinion - cause there are people, who complain about style intensity in literature: they prefer cereals with milk than abyssinian bitches roasted alive on bringhausers and watered with ya-yoo juice.” - Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz
49. “You try spending six months sitting at somebody's bedside, waiting for them to die and then tell me that the happy-ending love story isn't one of God's good gifts.” - Susan Elizabeth Phillips
50. “Pembalasan paling indah yang sangat pedih adalah lewat novel.” - Helvy Tiana Rosa
51. “They all dreamt of each other that night, as was natural, considering how thin the partitions were between them, and how strangely they had been lifted off the earth to sit next each other in mid-ocean, and see every detail of each others' faces, and hear whatever they chanced to say.” - Virginia Woolf
52. “Somewhere there's someone who dreams of your smile, and finds in your presence that life is worthwhile. So, when you are lonely remember it's true: somebody, somewhere is thinking of you.” - Atul Purohit
53. “I just came this morning and haven't been debriefed yet about the status of our latest prisoners. As a matter of fact, I'd barely stepped inside,” - Elle Aycart
54. “The manager swiftly overtook him, sliding effortlessly past the skinny Englishman, with the practiced ease of someone used to slinking around ailing, despotic monarchs.” - Tom Vater
55. “Irma, she said. But I had started to walk away. I heard her say some more things but by then I had yanked my skirt up and was running down the road away from her and begging the wind to obliterate her voice. She wanted to live with me. She missed me. She wanted me to come back home. She wanted to run away. She was yelling all this stuff and I wanted so badly for her to shut up. She was quiet for a second and I stopped running and turned around once to look at her. She was a thimble-sized girl on the road, a speck of a living thing. Her white-blond hair flew around her head like a small fire and it was all I could see because everything else about her blended in with the countryside. He offered you a what? she yelled. An espresso! I yelled back. It was like yelling at a shorting wire or a burning bush. What is it? she said. Coffee! I yelled. Irma, can I come and live--I turned around again and began to run.” - Miriam Toews
56. “I was beginning to understand something I couldn't articulate. It was a jazzy feeling in my chest, a fluttering, a kind of buzzing in my brain. Warmth. Life. The circulation of blood. Sanguinity. I don't know. I understood the enormous risk of telling the truth, how the telling could result in every level of hell reigning down on you, your skin scorched to the bone and then bone to ash and then nothing but a lingering odour of shame and decomposition, but now I was also beginning to understand the new and alien feeling of taking the risk and having the person on the other end of the telling, the listener, say: Bad shit at home? You guys are running away? Yeah, I said. I understand, said, Noehmi.” - Miriam Toews
57. “Writing consist of everything. whether your writing is of riddles, rimes, prose, trivial, general, of thought, or of feeling. indiscretions you've done or have fantasized about. love, deception, romance, fear, death, life, pain, & yes even happiness. writing is of a specific purpose & states a meaning within what is written.” - Michael Stuckey
58. “All cats are gray in the dark. And besides, her actions have less to do with her, and everything to do with you.” - Jaye Frances
59. “He’d used the amulet to read my thoughts again. I pictured smacking him in the face.” - Priya Ardis
60. “I noticed him right away. No, it wasn’t his lean, rugged face. Or the dark waves of shiny hair that hung just a little too long on his forehead. It wasn’t the slim, collarless biker jacket he wore, hugging his lean shoulders. It was the way he stood. The confident way he waited in the cafeteria line to get a slice of pizza. He didn’t saunter. He didn’t amble. He stood at the center, and let the other people buzz around him. His stance was straight and sure.” - Priya Ardis
61. “تحبني لأننا نتشابه كثيرا ونختلف أكثر، وأحبك لأنك تلهمني وتفهمني وتتقبل جنوني.” - لطيفة الحاج
62. “قرأت مرة: يسهل على الرجل أن يحب المرأة التي تستمع له. أنا استمع لك كل الوقت، بكل حواسي، فهل سيأتي اليوم الذي تحبني فيه؟” - لطيفة الحاج
63. “أنا نجمة لأنك القمر الذي يحتاج نوري، أو أني نجمة بعيدة صغيرة وأنت القمر وسيد السماء.” - لطيفة الحاج
64. “وحده البكاء والحزن كان يحتضن وحدتي، وحدتي التي وددت لو تخترقها بكلماتك، لو تسمح لي على الأقل بأن أحبك على طريقي، بأن أقول لك كل شيء عني، بأن تتقبل ثرثراتي ولا تتمنى أن أختفي من الكون أنا التي صارت أمنيتي الوحيدة أن يخلو الكون من الناس وتبقى أنت.” - لطيفة الحاج
65. “The dominant primordial beast was strong in Buck” - Jack London
66. “God is at the helm even when you think your ship is sinking. Just keep trusting that the captain knows more about where you're heading than you do, and eventually you'll get where you need to be.” - Kevin Alan Milne
67. “The gods command that there can be only one king. But I swear that I am no better than a common soldier today, and you are as good as kings. Each man here is part of me. So what’s left for the king to say? Only two words, but they are the two that your hearts want to hear. Victory.And home!” Then his command cracked like a whip. “All together—move!” - Deepak Chopra
68. “Out in the field, any connection with home just makes you weaker. It reminds you that you were once civilized, soft; and that can get you killed faster than a bullet through the head.” - Henry Mosquera
69. “Why certainly, words possess power. They do! But releasing their magic requires combining and arranging those words in the right order.” - Richelle E. Goodrich
70. “If the US is a human melting pot, then Eastern Europe is a scrap yard.” - Péter Zilahy
71. “The Americans have perfected weather forecasts: a model presents a model of the Earth, a map, and jabs at it with her pointer – here and here, this is going to happen. Voodoo.” - Péter Zilahy
72. “تنتظرين الآن متى تنقضي اللحظة و أنا في حالة توتر ، أحاول أن أقول كل ما بداخلي ، و أعلم أن اختصار ذلك يكون في أن تضعي أناملك على صدري ، أجزم أن يبللها الندى ، أرواحنا من ماء ، ونبضها مطر، وعطائها ورد، عانقيني بقوة ، دعيني أخضر أكثر ويفوح طهرك فيني ، ويتنفسني العالم ، العالم الكبير المختزل في ذاتك وحدك ، وحدك من أشعر بها ، وأجدها، وأعلم يقيناً أنها مني ، وأتجاهل كل شيء آخر بالمناسبة لا أعير اهتماماً لكل ما يعبرني من بعيد لذلك أبدو بليداً في الوقت الذي أتقين أني أقف في المنتصف عند مركز الحياة ، بالضبط عند نبضك فيني . حبيبتي .. أكثر من الحب أحبك” - محمد حامد
73. “My conception of a novel is that it ought to be a personal struggle, a direct and total engagement with the author's story of his or her own life. This conception, again, I take from Kafka, who, although he was never transformed into an insect, and although he never had a piece of food (an apple from his family's table!) lodged in his flesh and rotting there, devoted his whole life as a writer to describing his personal struggle with his family, with women, with moral law, with his Jewish heritage, with his Unconscious, with his sense of guilt, and with the modern world. Kafka's work, which grows out of the nighttime dreamworld in Kafka's brain, is *more* autobiographical than any realistic retelling of his daytime experiences at the office or with his family or with a prostitute could have been. What is fiction, after all, if not a kind of purposeful dreaming? The writer works to create a dream that is vivid and has meaning, so that the reader can then vividly dream it and experience meaning. And work like Kafka's, which seems to proceed directly from dream, is therefore an exceptionally pure form of autobiography. There's an important paradox here that I would like to stress: the greater the autobiographical content of a fiction writer's work, the *smaller* its superficial resemblance to the writer's actual life. The deeper the writer digs for meaning, the more the random particulars of the writer's life become *impediments* to deliberate dreaming.” - Jonathan Franzen
74. “Mee and Ow sat in the shade of a mango tree and were doing their make-up. Both of them wore gloves that reached all the way up to their elbows, to keep the tropical sun off their skins. They looked briefly at Maier, with the curiosity usually reserved for a passing dog. It was too early for professional enthusiasm.” - Tom Vater
75. “وربما لا أفارق فراشي وأحلم .. وأحلم أنك تأتين ونحتفل ، وأحلم بأن الحلم الذي كنت أتلوه على مسامع أوراقي يتحقق ، وأحلم أن الغد الجميل أقبل ، وأحلم أن الورد والعطر والمطر وأنا أربعة نمارس لعبة النرد على غيمة ، وأحلم أن أنام . . وتهدهدني الملائكة .” - محمد حامد
76. “Para el obispo, la vista de la guillotina fue un golpe terrible del cual tardó mucho tiempo en reponerse. En efecto: el patíbulo, cuando está ante nuestros ojos levantado, derecho, tiene algo que alucina. Se puede sentir cierta indiferencia hacia la pena de muerte, no pronunciarse ni en pro ni en contra, no decir ni sí ni que no mientras no se ha visto una guillotina; pero si se llega a ver una, la sacudida es violenta; es menester decidirse y tomar partido en pro o en contra de ella. Los unos admiran, como De Maistre; los otros execran, como Beccaria. La guillotina es la concreción de la ley: se llama 'vindicta'; no es indiferente ni os permite que lo seáis tampoco. Quien llega a verla se estremece con el más misterioso de los estremecimientos. Todas las cuestiones sociales alzan sus interrogantes en torno de aquella cuchilla. El cadalso es una visión: no es un tablado ni una máquina, ni un mecanismo frío de madera, de hierro y de cuerdas. Parece que es una especie de ser que tiene no sé qué sombría iniciativa. Se diría que aquellos andamios ven, que aquella madera, aquel hierro y aquellas cuerdas tienen voluntad. En la horrible meditación en que aquella vista sume al alma, el patíbulo aparece terrible y como teniendo conciencia de lo que hace. El patíbulo es el cómplice del verdugo; devora, come carne, bebe sangre. Es una especie de monstruo fabricado por el juez y por el carpintero; un espectro que parece vivir una especie de vida espantosa, hecha con todas las muertes que ha dado.” - Victor Hugo
77. “It’s not that we have to leave this life one day, it's how many things we have to leave all at once: holding hands, hotel rooms, wine, summertime, drunkenness, and the physics of falling leaves, clothing, myrrh, perfumed hair, flirting friends, two strangers' glance; the reflection of the moon, with words like, 'Soon' ... 'do you want me?' ... '...to lie enlaced' ... 'and sleep entwined' thinking ahead, with thoughts behind...?' Ô, Why!Why can’t we leave this life slowly?” - Roman Payne
78. “Beginning a novel is always hard. It feels like going nowhere. I always have to write at least 100 pages that go into the trashcan before it finally begins to work. It's discouraging, but necessary to write those pages. I try to consider them pages -100 to zero of the novel.” - Barbara Kingsolver
79. “The bourgeois novel is the greatest enemy of truth and honesty that was ever invented.” - J.G. Ballard
80. “Most times, my mind is just an ongoing, present-tense, first-person monologue. It's like I'm writing a novel.” - Andrew Shaffer
81. “We read novels because we need stories; we crave them; we can’t live without telling them and hearing them. Stories are how we make sense of our lives and of the world. When we’re distressed and go to therapy, our therapist’s job is to help us tell our story. Life doesn’t come with plots; it’s messy and chaotic; life is one damn, inexplicable thing after another. And we can’t have that. We insist on meaning. And so we tell stories so that our lives make sense.” - John Dufresne
82. “We were afraid of so many things: Of our children, who lived in their own world of casually lurid pleasures, zombies and cartoon killers and thuggish music. Of our neighbors, who were buying gold and ammunition and great quantities of freeze-dried food, and who were organizing themselves into angry tribes recognizable to one another by bumper stickers.” - Jean Thompson
83. “We’re novel worthy, day walking, blood sucking, tortured souls trapped in a body that can’t die for all eternity with no feelings, no emotions and no heart. - Elaine White, Runaway Girl” - Stavros and contributors