Everyone in the room was so spectral-looking that Madeleine’s natural healthiness seemed suspect, like a vote for Reagan.
—Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot
You were once wild here. Don’t let them tame you.
—Isadora Duncan
My life story is the story of everyone I’ve ever met.
—Jonathan Safran Foer
Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.
—Joseph Heller
Another thing is no matter how much you think you love somebody, you’ll step back when the pool of their blood edges up too close.
—Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters
Life’s single lesson: that there is more accident to it than a man can ever admit to in a lifetime and stay sane.
—Thomas Pynchon, V.
There comes a time in a man’s life when to get where he has to go—if there are no doors or windows—he walks through a wall.
—Bernard Malamud
It is so unsatisfactory to read a noble passage and have no one you love at hand to share the happiness with you.
—Mark Twain
There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love.
—Christopher Moorley, Pipefuls
Give a man a fire and he’s warm for a day, but set fire to him and he’s warm for the rest of his life.
—Terry Pratchett, Jingo
She held herself very straight, like Audrey Hepburn, whom all women idolize and men never think about.
—Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides
Let all of life be an unfettered howl. Like the crowd greeting the gladiator. Don’t stop to think, don’t interrupt the scream, exhale, release life’s rapture.
—Vladimir Nabokov
Happiness quite unshared can scarcely be called happiness; it has no taste.
—Charlotte Bronte
The plain state of being human is dramatic enough for anyone; you don’t need to be a heroin addict or a performance poet to experience extremity. You just have to love someone.
—Nick Hornby, How to Be Good
Consciousness was upon him before he could get out of the way.
—Kingsley Amis
