β
Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.
β
β
Allen Saunders
β
Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift of God, which is why we call it the present.
β
β
Bil Keane
β
We accept the love we think we deserve.
β
β
Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)
β
It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.
β
β
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Harry Potter, #2))
β
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
β
β
Oscar Wilde (Lady Windermere's Fan)
β
I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.
β
β
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, #1))
β
We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.
β
β
AnaΓ―s Nin
β
We read to know we're not alone.
β
β
William Nicholson (Shadowlands: A Play)
β
If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.
β
β
C.S. Lewis
β
We're all human, aren't we? Every human life is worth the same, and worth saving.
β
β
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7))
β
All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.
β
β
Helen Keller
β
Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.
β
β
Mother Teresa
β
All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.
β
β
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, #1))
β
Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.
β
β
Steve Jobs
β
Weβre all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdnessβand call it loveβtrue love.
β
β
Robert Fulghum (True Love)
β
Remember, we're madly in love, so it's all right to kiss me anytime you feel like it.
β
β
Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1))
β
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
β
β
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Mother Night)
β
Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.
β
β
AnaΓ―s Nin
β
And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.
β
β
Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)
β
We believe in ordinary acts of bravery, in the courage that drives one person to stand up for another.
β
β
Veronica Roth (Divergent (Divergent, #1))
β
It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Diary)
β
Be nice to nerds. You may end up working for them. We all could.
β
β
Charles J. Sykes (Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves But Can't Read, Write or Add)
β
So it's not gonna be easy. It's going to be really hard; we're gonna have to work at this everyday, but I want to do that because I want you. I want all of you, forever, everyday. You and me... everyday.
β
β
Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook)
β
Just because you have the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn't mean we all have.
β
β
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter, #5))
β
When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.
β
β
Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)
β
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
β
β
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)
β
Do you remember me telling you we are practicing non-verbal spells, Potter?"
"Yes," said Harry stiffly.
"Yes, sir."
"There's no need to call me "sir" Professor."
The words had escaped him before he knew what he was saying.
β
β
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter, #6))
β
Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.
β
β
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
β
We love the things we love for what they are.
β
β
Robert Frost
β
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
β
β
Edgar Allan Poe
β
The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.
β
β
C.S. Lewis
β
Maybe our favorite quotations say more about us than about the stories and people we're quoting.
β
β
John Green
β
I like the night. Without the dark, we'd never see the stars.
β
β
Stephenie Meyer (Twilight (The Twilight Saga, #1))
β
We are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided.
β
β
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Harry Potter, #4))
β
I think you still love me, but we canβt escape the fact that Iβm not enough for you. I knew this was going to happen. So Iβm not blaming you for falling in love with another woman. Iβm not angry, either. I should be, but Iβm not. I just feel pain. A lot of pain. I thought I could imagine how much this would hurt, but I was wrong.
β
β
Haruki Murakami (South of the Border, West of the Sun)
β
We came to see Jace. Is he alright?"
"I don't know," Magnus said. "Does he normally just lie on the floor like that without moving?
β
β
Cassandra Clare (City of Ashes (The Mortal Instruments, #2))
β
We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.
β
β
AnaΓ―s Nin
β
It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Diary)
β
Well, don't expect us to be too impressed. We just saw Finnick Odair in his underwear.
β
β
Suzanne Collins (Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3))
β
We loved with a love that was more than love.
β
β
Edgar Allan Poe
β
We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.
β
β
May Sarton
β
This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something.
β
β
Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
β
We should all start to live before we get too old. Fear is stupid. So are regrets.
β
β
Marilyn Monroe
β
It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more.
β
β
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter, #6))
β
If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
β
β
Albert Einstein
β
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
β
β
Marianne Williamson (A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles")
β
We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.
β
β
Maya Angelou
β
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
β
β
Martin Luther King Jr. (I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches That Changed the World)
β
I'm in love with you," he said quietly.
"Augustus," I said.
"I am," he said. He was staring at me, and I could see the corners of his eyes crinkling. "I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, and I am in love with you.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
β
β
Martin Luther King Jr.
β
We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.
β
β
Charles Bukowski
β
I love you. I am who I am because of you. You are every reason, every hope, and every dream I've ever had, and no matter what happens to us in the future, everyday we are together is the greatest day of my life. I will always be yours.
β
β
Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook)
β
So, I guess we are who we are for alot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even if we don't have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there. We can still do things. And we can try to feel okay about them.
β
β
Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)
β
For the two of us, home isn't a place. It is a person. And we are finally home.
β
β
Stephanie Perkins (Anna and the French Kiss (Anna and the French Kiss, #1))
β
I would have come for you. And if I couldn't walk, I'd crawl to you, and no matter how broken we were, we'd fight our way out together-knives drawn, pistols blazing. Because that's what we do. We never stop fighting.
β
β
Leigh Bardugo (Crooked Kingdom (Six of Crows, #2))
β
We are all different. Donβt judge, understand instead.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall.
Then fill the shelves with lots of books.
β
β
Roald Dahl (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Charlie Bucket, #1))
β
Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.
β
β
Arthur C. Clarke
β
If ever there is tomorrow when we're not together... there is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we're apart... I'll always be with you.
β
β
Carter Crocker
β
We fell in love, despite our differences, and once we did, something rare and beautiful was created. For me, love like that has only happened once, and that's why every minute we spent together has been seared in my memory. I'll never forget a single moment of it.
β
β
Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook)
β
By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.
β
β
Confucius
β
I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.
β
β
Ralph Waldo Emerson
β
It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things.
β
β
Lemony Snicket (Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid)
β
Fire is catching! And if we burn, you burn with us!
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β
Suzanne Collins (Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3))
β
You haven't got a letter on yours," George observed. "I suppose she thinks you don't forget your name. But we're not stupid-we know we're called Gred and Forge.
β
β
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter, #1))
β
Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect.
β
β
Margaret Mitchell
β
Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.
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β
Donna Tartt (The Secret History)
β
None of us really changes over time. We only become more fully what we are.
β
β
Anne Rice (The Vampire Lestat (The Vampire Chronicles, #2))
β
Life becomes easier and more beautiful when we can see the good in other people.
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β
Roy T. Bennett
β
The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.
β
β
Albert Einstein
β
Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.
β
β
James Baldwin
β
It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.
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β
Patrick Rothfuss (The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1))
β
Do you remember back at the hotel when you promised that if we lived, youβd get dressed up in a nurseβs outfit and give me a sponge bath?" asked Jace.
"It was Simon who promised you the sponge bath."
"As soon as Iβm back on my feet, handsome," said Simon.
"I knew we should have left you a rat.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β
When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.
β
β
Henri J.M. Nouwen (Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life)
β
But I donβt want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you canβt help that," said the Cat: "weβre all mad here. Iβm mad. Youβre mad."
"How do you know Iβm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldnβt have come here.
β
β
Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland)
β
When adults say, "Teenagers think they are invincible" with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.
β
β
Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)
β
Without pain, how could we know joy?' This is an old argument in the field of thinking about suffering and its stupidity and lack of sophistication could be plumbed for centuries but suffice it to say that the existence of broccoli does not, in any way, affect the taste of chocolate.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
I am not sure exactly what heaven will be like, but I know that when we die and it comes time for God to judge us, He will not ask, 'How many good things have you done in your life?' rather He will ask, 'How much love did you put into what you did?
β
β
Mother Teresa
β
The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.
β
β
Douglas Adams (The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time)
β
There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows thatβs what everyone else does.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
No relationship is perfect, ever. There are always some ways you have to bend, to compromise, to give something up in order to gain something greater...The love we have for each other is bigger than these small differences. And that's the key. It's like a big pie chart, and the love in a relationship has to be the biggest piece. Love can make up for a lot.
β
β
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
β
Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisioned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!
β
β
J.R.R. Tolkien
β
There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.
β
β
John Lennon
β
Let us find the dam snack bar," Zoe said. "We should eat while we can."
Grover cracked a smile. "The dam snack bar?"
Zoe blinked. "Yes. What is funny?"
"Nothing," Grover said, trying to keep a straight face. "I could use some dam french fries."
Even Thalia smiled at that. "And I need to use the dam restroom."
...
I started cracking up, and Thalia and Grover joined in, while Zoe just looked at me. "I do not understand."
"I want to use the dam water fountain," Grover said.
"And..." Thalia tried to catch her breath. "I want to buy a dam t-shirt.
β
β
Rick Riordan (The Titanβs Curse (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #3))
β
For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.
β
β
Charles Bukowski
β
There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life.
" Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget, that until the day God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words, 'Wait and Hope.
β
β
Alexandre Dumas
β
We live and breathe words. .... It was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone. They could be honest with me, and I with them. Reading your words, what you wrote, how you were lonely sometimes and afraid, but always brave; the way you saw the world, its colors and textures and sounds, I felt--I felt the way you thought, hoped, felt, dreamt. I felt I was dreaming and thinking and feeling with you. I dreamed what you dreamed, wanted what you wanted--and then I realized that truly I just wanted you.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Prince (The Infernal Devices, #2))
β
Weβre all seeking that special person who is right for us. But if youβve been through enough relationships, you begin to suspect thereβs no right person, just different flavors of wrong. Why is this? Because you yourself are wrong in some way, and you seek out partners who are wrong in some complementary way. But it takes a lot of living to grow fully into your own wrongness. And it isnβt until you finally run up against your deepest demons, your unsolvable problemsβthe ones that make you truly who you areβthat weβre ready to find a lifelong mate. Only then do you finally know what youβre looking for. Youβre looking for the wrong person. But not just any wrong person: it's got to be the right wrong personβsomeone you lovingly gaze upon and think, βThis is the problem I want to have.β
I will find that special person who is wrong for me in just the right way.
β
β
Andrew Boyd (Daily Afflictions: The Agony of Being Connected to Everything in the Universe)
β
For attractive lips, speak words of kindness.
For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people.
For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry.
For beautiful hair, let a child run his fingers through it once a day.
For poise, walk with the knowledge youβll never walk alone.
...
We leave you a tradition with a future.
The tender loving care of human beings will never become obsolete.
People even more than things have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed and redeemed and redeemed and redeemed.
Never throw out anybody.
Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, youβll find one at the end of your arm.
As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands: one for helping yourself, the other for helping others.
Your βgood old daysβ are still ahead of you, may you have many of them.
β
β
Sam Levenson (In One Era & Out the Other)
β
May I see you again?" he asked. There was an endearing nervousness in his voice.
I smiled. "Sure."
"Tomorrow?" he asked.
"Patience, grasshopper," I counseled. "You don't want to seem overeager.
"Right, that's why I said tomorrow," he said. "I want to see you again tonight. But I'm willing to wait all night and much of tomorrow." I rolled my eyes. "I'm serious," he said.
"You don't even know me," I said. I grabbed the book from the center console. "How about I call you when I finish this?"
"But you don't even have my phone number," he said.
"I strongly suspect you wrote it in this book."
He broke out into that goofy smile. "And you say we don't know each other.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
I have something I need to tell you," he says. I run my fingers along the tendons in his hands and look back at him. "I might be in love with you." He smiles a little. "I'm waiting until I'm sure to tell you, though."
"That's sensible of you," I say, smiling too. "We should find some paper so you can make a list or a chart or something."
I feel his laughter against my side, his nose sliding along my jaw, his lips pressing my ear.
"Maybe I'm already sure," he says, "and I just don't want to frighten you."
I laugh a little. "Then you should know better."
"Fine," he says. "Then I love you.
β
β
Veronica Roth (Divergent (Divergent, #1))
β
Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.
β
β
Neil Gaiman (The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones)
β
Do you think I am an automaton? β a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! β I have as much soul as you β and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal β as we are!
β
β
Charlotte BrontΓ« (Jane Eyre)
β
THE FIRST TEN LIES THEY TELL YOU IN HIGH SCHOOL
1. We are here to help you.
2. You will have time to get to your class before the bell rings.
3. The dress code will be enforced.
4. No smoking is allowed on school grounds.
5. Our football team will win the championship this year.
6. We expect more of you here.
7. Guidance counselors are always available to listen.
8. Your schedule was created with you in mind.
9. Your locker combination is private.
10. These will be the years you look back on fondly.
TEN MORE LIES THEY TELL YOU IN HIGH SCHOOL
1. You will use algebra in your adult lives.
2. Driving to school is a privilege that can be taken away.
3. Students must stay on campus during lunch.
4. The new text books will arrive any day now.
5. Colleges care more about you than your SAT scores.
6. We are enforcing the dress code.
7. We will figure out how to turn off the heat soon.
8. Our bus drivers are highly trained professionals.
9. There is nothing wrong with summer school.
10. We want to hear what you have to say.
β
β
Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak)
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Augustus Waters was a self-aggrandizing bastard. But we forgive him. We forgive him not because he had a heart as figuratively good as his literal one sucked, or because he knew more about how to hold a cigarette than any nonsmoker in history, or because he got eighteen years when he should've gotten more.'
'Seventeen,' Gus corrected.
'I'm assuming you've got some time, you interupting bastard.
'I'm telling you,' Isaac continued, 'Augustus Waters talked so much that he'd interupt you at his own funeral. And he was pretentious: Sweet Jesus Christ, that kid never took a piss without pondering the abundant metaphorical resonances of human waste production. And he was vain: I do not believe I have ever met a more physically attractive person who was more acutely aware of his own physical attractiveness.
'But I will say this: When the scientists of the future show up at my house with robot eyes and they tell me to try them on, I will tell the scientists to screw off, because I do not want to see a world without him.'
I was kind of crying by then.
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John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
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I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not.
I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Beatles and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectable, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkled lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women.
I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state.
I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste.
I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like martians in War of the Worlds.
I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman.
I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumble bee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself.
I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck.
I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too.
I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system.
I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.
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Neil Gaiman (American Gods (American Gods, #1))