“Never throw away squeezed lemon, but keep them for the day by the sink. Then you can use them to remove fish, onion or garlic smells from your fingers. Or you can stick them on your elbows while you are reading a book, to soften and whiten your skin.”

“Inconveniently, books are all the pages in them, not just the ones you choose to read.”

“...sometimes there are moments in your life that are more important than some of the other moments but that they can slip past you before you get a chance to look at them closely enough, the way a leaf sweeps past you in a river and disappears.”

“Cram your head with characters and stories. Abuse your library privileges. Never stop looking at the world, and never stop reading to find out what sense other people have made of it. If people give you a hard time and tell you to get your nose out of a book, tell them you're working. Tell them it's research. Tell them to pipe down and leave you alone.”

“Read for fun, read for information, read in order to understand yourself and other people with quite different ideas. Learn about the world beyond your door. Learn to be compassionate and grow in wisdom. Books can help us in all these ways.”

“i think i love fire and ice by robert frost not because it deals with the end of all things, but because it deals with love. love can destroy all things when you have it, or it can destroy all things when you do not. it can either save you, or kill you. there are many kinds of love: the love with someone who fits you, and meets all of your needs. this can create a contentment that makes you happy and full. there is a more dangerous form of love. this love is kin to obsession, possession, and desire. you cannot breathe without their beings there. you cannot think, but of them. they plague you, and creep into everything you do until you despair of it. then one day you realize, not only did losing them create the most beautiful way of finding who they truly were, but it created you as you are. they made you something greater than you were. love is sickness, but it is the kind of sickness that makes life worth living. you realize that not only can you now live with them, but you can live without them, and you can stand beside them, while letting them have their freedom. The deep desire to hold them higher sits so deep in your soul that you would give your life to have them be no one other than the person you have come to see them as. faults and all, because no they aren't perfect, but who should be?”

“The moral, of course, is that you must always try to see other people's Point of View before you criticize anybody. Histories are crammed full of unkind things, silly things, and untrue things—why? Because so often the people who write them will not try to see or feel any Point of View but their own...So mind that you always look out for the Point of View and help people to see yours, too, if you want them to understand you.”