1. “One must be careful of books, and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.”
– The Infernal Devices, Cassandra Clare
2. “Beauty is an enormous, unmerited gift given randomly, stupidly.”
– And the Mountains Echoed, Khaled Hosseini
3. “For poems are like rainbows; they escape you quickly.”
– The Big Sea, Langston Hughes
4. “I am nothing special; just a common man with common thoughts, and I’ve led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten. But in one respect I have succeeded as gloriously as anyone who’s ever lived: I’ve loved another with all my heart and soul; and to me, this has always been enough.”
– The Notebook, Nicholas Sparks
5. “And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.”
– East of Eden, John Steinbeck
6. “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
– Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
7. “I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart; I am, I am, I am.”
– The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
8. “Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends. The question of self-pity.”
– The Year Of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion
9. “When you fall in love, it is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake, and then it subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots are to become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement. It is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every part of your body. No … don’t blush. I am telling you some truths. For that is just being in love; which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over, when being in love has burned away. Doesn’t sound very exciting, does it? But it is!”
– Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernières
10. “‘Dear God,’ she prayed, ‘let me be something every minute of every hour of my life.’”
– A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith
11. “In case you hadn’t noticed, you have a mental dialogue going on inside your head that never stops. It just keeps going and going. Have you ever wondered why it talks in there? How does it decide what to say and when to say it?”
– The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself, Michael A Singer
12. “It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories.”
– Of Human Bondage, W. Somerset Maugham
13. “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”
– The Go-Between, L. P. Hartley
14. “To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life.”
– Les Misérables, Victor Hugo
15. “In spite of everything, I still believe people are really good at heart.”
– The Diary of Anne Frank, Anne Frank
16. “In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.”
– The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
17. “We cross our bridges as we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and the presumption that once our eyes watered.”
– Rosencratz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Tom Stoppard
18. “All children, except one, grow up.”
– Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie
19. “You don’t have to live forever, you just have to live.”
– Tuck Everlasting, Natalie Babbitt
20. “I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded; not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.”
The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
