"Who on earth could feel comfortable enough to sleep in a room with no books?"
-My Lady Jane by Cynthia Hand

"She considered writing to him now asking him if he too had felt like this, as thought he had been shut away somewhere and was trapped in a place where there was nothing.  It was like hell, she thought, because she could see no end to it, and to the feeling that came with it, but the torment was strange, it was all in her mind, it was like the arrival of night if you knew that you would never see anything in daylight again.  She did not know what she was going to do."
-Brooklyn by Colm Toibin

"Eilis slipped away, glad no one had noticed that she had not spoken once at the meal.  She wondered if she could go out now, do anything rather than face her tomb of a bedroom and all the thoughts that would come when she lay awake and all the thoughts that would come when she slept.  She stood in the hall, and then turned upstairs, realizing that she was afraid too of the outside, and even if she were not she would have no idea where to go at this time of the evening.  She hated this house, she thought, its smells, its noises, its colors.  She was already crying as she went up the stairs.  She knew that as long as the others were discussing their wardrobes in the kitchen below, she would be able to cry as loudly as she pleased without their hearing her."
-Brooklyn by Colm Toibin

"She was nobody here.  It was not just that she had no friends and family; it was rather that she was a ghost in this room, in the streets on the way to work, on the shop floor.  Nothing meant anything.  The rooms in the house on Friary Street belonged to her, she thought; when she moved in them she was really there.  In the town, if she walked to the shop or to the Vocational School, the air, the light, the ground, it was all solid and part of her, even if she met no one familiar.  Nothing here was part of her.  It was false, empty, she thought.  She closed her eyes and tried to think, as she had done so many times in her life, of something she was looking forward to, but there was nothing.  Not the slightest thing.  Not even Sunday.  Nothing maybe except sleep, and she was not even certain she was looking forward to sleep.  In any case, she could not sleep yet, since it was not yet nine o'clock.  There was nothing she could do.  It was as though she had been locked away."
-Brooklyn by Colm Toibin

"There was, she thought, enough sadness in the house, maybe even more than she realized.  She would try as best she could not to add to it.  Her mother and Rose could not be fooled, she was sure, but there seemed to her an even greater reason why there should be no tears before her departure.  They would not be needed.  What she would need to do in the days before she left and on the morning of her departure was smile, so that they would remember her smiling."
-Brooklyn by Colm Toibin

"Until now, Eilis had always presumed that she would live in the town all her life, as her mother had done, knowing everyone, having the same friends and neighbors, the same routines in the same streets.  She had expected that she would find a job in the town, and then marry someone and give up the job and have children.  Now, she felt that she was being singled out for something for which she was not in any way prepared, and this, despite the fear it carried with it, gave her a feeling, or more a set of feelings, she thought she might experience in the days before her wedding, days in which everyone looked at her in the rush of arrangements with light in their eyes, days in which she herself was fizzy with excitement but careful not to think too precisely about what the next few weeks would be like in case she lost her nerve."
-Brooklyn by Colm Toibin

"The saddest realization I've had in my life is that my parents are people.  Sad, human people.  I aged a decade in that moment."
-The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo by Amy Schumer

"'We can't ever be together,' he finished.  'But I always want to know you, even if we're in the same room and you're just saying hi to me over and over again, I'll be perfectly happy.  I'll always want to be sitting across from you.'"
-More Happy Than Not by Adam Silvera

"If you can bring forth what is inside you, what you bring forth will save you.  If you don't bring forth what is inside you, what you bring forth can destroy you."
-Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

"Writing can be a pretty desperate endeavor, because it is about some of our deepest needs: our need to be visible, to be heard, our need to make sense of our lives, to wake up and grow and belong."
-Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

"Because for some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth.  What a miracle is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you.  Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave.  They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.  They are full of all the things that you don't get in real life - wonderful, lyrical language, for instance, right off the bat.  And quality of attention: we may notice amazing details during the course of a day but we rarely let ourselves stop and really pay attention.  An author makes you notice, makes you pay attention, and this is a great gift.  My gratitude for good writing is unbounded; I'm grateful for it the way I'm grateful for the ocean.  Aren't you? I ask."
-Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

"Writing can give you what having a baby can give you:  it can get you to start paying attention, can help you soften, can wake you up."
-Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

"The good news is that some days it feels like you just have to keep getting out of your own way so that whatever it is that wants to be written can use you to write it."
-Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

"Adults lie.  They lie about how they love children equally.  They never do.  They love children differently, and the difference is so broad that equality is not even in the picture."
-A World Without You by Beth Revis

"I'm good at science because I'm good at listening.  I have been told I am intelligent, and I have been told that I am simple-minded.  I have been told that I am trying to do too much, and I have been told that I can't do what I want to do because I am a woman, and I have been told that I have only been allowed to do what I have done because I am a woman.  I have been told that I can have eternal life, and I have been told that I will burn myself out into an early death.  I have been admonished for being too feminine and I have been distrusted for being too masculine.  I have been warned that I am far too sensitive and I have been accused of being heartlessly callous.  But I was told all of these things by people who can't understand the present or see the future any better than I can.  Such recurrent pronouncements have forced me to accept that because I am a female scientist, anybody knows what the hell I am, and it has given me the delicious freedom to make it up as I go along.  I don't take advice from my colleagues, and I try not to give it.  When I am pressed, I resort to these two sentences:  You shouldn't take this job too seriously.  Except for when you should."
-Lab Girl by Hope Jahren

"But it wasn't anything like the fear that accompanied my drowning nightmare - harrowing and visceral.  No, this fear made me feel fizzy.  Hopeful. 

In fact, this fear felt like waking up to discover I am still here."
-The Start of Me and You by Emery Lord

"That I might always be a little bit vicious or restless.  That I might crave peace, but never a cage of comfort."
-A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas

"'Tell you what,' said Victor.  'You remember me, and I'll remember you, and that way we won't be forgotten.'"
-Vicious by V.E. Schwab

"Plenty of humans were monstrous, and plenty of monsters knew how to play at being human."
-Vicious by V.E. Schwab

"It had taken all his control to hide the anger, the desire to pen over Eli's life, and rewrite it into his."
-Vicious by V.E. Schwab

"Victor wondered about lots of things.  He wondered about himself (whether he was broken, or special, or better, or worse) and about other people (whether they were all really as stupid as they seemed).  He wondered about Angie - what would happen if he told her how he felt, what it would be like if she chose him.  He wondered about life, and people, and science, and magic, and God, and whether he believed in any of them." 
-Vicious by V. E. Schwab  

"He meets me where I am, and because of the downward tilt of the driveway, we are toe to toe, nose to nose.  'Willowdean Opal Dickson, you are beautiful.  Fuck anyone who's ever made you feel anything less.'  His chest heaves.  'When I close my eyes, I see you.  I can talk to you.  In a way I never have with anyone else.'

Beautiful, he says.  Fat, I think.  But can't I be both at the same time?
-Dumplin' by Julie Murphy

"'Why?'  I drop my bag in the driveway.  'Why do you want to be with this?'  I wave my arm up and down the length of my body.  Immediately, I hate myself for this.  The only person making this about my body is me." 
-Dumplin' by Julie Murphy

"I expected to hear from Mitch yesterday.  A follow-up call of some sort to make sure we were cool after Halloween.  Or maybe, like, a customer service call to rate my satisfaction.  But nothing." 
-Dumplin' by Julie Murphy

"I get what he means, because I think I've played pretend my whole life.  I don't know when, but a really long time ago, I decided who I wanted to be.  And I've been acting like her - whoever she is - since.  But I think the act is fading, and I don't know if I like the person I am beneath it all.  I wish there were some kind of magic words that could bridge the gap between the person I am and the one I wish I could be.  Because the whole fake it till you make it thing?  It's not working for me." 
-Dumplin' by Julie Murphy

"No matter how much I tell myself that the fat and the stretch marks don't matter, they do.  Even if Bo, for whatever reason, doesn't care, I do.

Then there are days when I really give zero flying fucks, and I am totally satisfied with this body of mine.  How can I be both of those people at once?"
-Dumplin' by Julie Murphy

"It's not that I feel unworthy.  I deserve my happy ending.  But what if, for me, Bo is a high point and, for him, I'm a lapse in judgement?"
-Dumplin' by Julie Murphy

"Because for the first time in my life, I fit.  I fit without any question."
-Dumplin' by Julie Murphy

"My stomach starts to burn.  Crushes are so stupidly physical sometimes, like colds."
-Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here by Anna Breslaw

"(So this is how it happens.  This is how girls change for boys.  I am simultaneously annoyed at myself and mildly amazed that I have the ability.)"
-Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here by Anna Breslaw

"He turned towards me, a familiar face but in a really unfamiliar way, his green eyes locked on me.  He moved his head closer to mine, and it felt so right that I'd already close my eyes."
-Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here by Anna Breslaw

"I felt him subtly glance me up and down, quick and fluttery like a moth, as if I was some random girl walking by him on the street and we hadn't been best friends for almost seven years.  It gave me a little shiver.  In a good way, I realized."
-Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here by Anna Breslaw

"I think maybe the most frustrating feeling in the world is to have something to say but not know how to put it into words.  To have lived through something but not be able to get it out of you before it festers." 
-The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken

"I had the strangest feeling - like I had lost something without ever really having it in the first place - that I wasn't what I once was, and wasn't at all what I was meant to be.  The sensation made me feel hollow down to my bones."
-The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken

"I said her name. 

I recited 'Lovesong', a poem I like a great deal but she never though much of.  I apologised for reading it and told myself not to worry.

The ashes stirred and seemed eager so I tilted the thin and I yelled into the wind

I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU

and up they went, the sense of a cloud, the failure of clouds, scientifically quick and visually hopeless, a murder of little burnt birds flecked against the grey sky, the grey sea, the white sun, and gone.  And the boys were behind me, a tide-wall of laughter and yelling, hugging my legs, tripping and grabbing, leaping, spinning, stumbling, roaring, shrieking and the boys shouted

I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU

and their voice was the life and song of their mother. 
Unfinished.  Beautiful.  Everything."
-Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter

"Connoisseurs, they were, of how to miss a mother."
-Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter

"This is what we know of Dad.  He was a
quiet boy.  He drifted off on family walks,
he doodled and drew and his feelings were
easily hurt by rough kids at school.  He
didn't have a head for sums.  He spent the
first twenty years of his life reading books,
being not-bad-but-not-skilled at football
and waiting for Mum.  He loved the Greek
myths and Russians and Joyce.  He was
waiting to be our Dad.

And then our Mum and Dad were in love
and they were truly dry-stone strong and
durable and people speak of ease and joy
and spontaneity and the fact that their two
smells became one smell, our smell.  Us.

Afterwards he was quieter.  He was, for two
or three years, by all accounts, very odd.
He had the perpetual look and demeanour
of someone floating, turning in the beer-
gold light of evening and being surprised
by the enduring warmth.  A rolled-over
shoulder half-squint half-smile.  Caught
baffled by the perplexing slow-release of
sadness for ever and ever and ever.  Which
I suppose, looking back, was because of us.
He couldn't rage.  He couldn't want to die.
He couldn't rail against an absence when
it was grinning, singing, freckling in the
English summer tweedle dee tweedle dum
in front of him.  Perhaps if Crow taught
him anything it was a constant balancing.
For want of a less dirty word: faith. 

A howling sorry which is
yes which is thank you which is onwards."
-Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter

"And I stood and breathed their air and considered - as always - things like fragility, danger, luck, imperfection, chance, being kind, being funny, being honest, eyes, hair, bones, the impossible hectic silent epidermis rejuvenating itself, never nervous, always kissable, even when scabbed, even so salty I made it, and I felt so many nights utterly, totally yanked apart by how much I loved these children..."
-Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter

"There's grief and there's impractical obsession.

I was impractically obsessed with before, I said."
-Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter

"Everybody passing could comprehend how much I miss her.  How physical my missing is.  I miss her so much it is a vast golden prince, a concert hall, a thousand trees, a lake, nine thousand buses, a million cars, twenty million birds and more.  The whole city is my missing her."
-Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter

"I remember being scared that something must, surely, go wrong, if we were this happy, her and me, in the early days, when our love was settling into the shape of our lives like cake mixture reaching the corners of the thing as it swells and bakes."
-Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter

"Again.  I beg everything again."
-Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter

"We will never fight again, our lovely, quick, template-ready arguments.  Our delicate cross-stich of bickers."
-Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter

"Where are the fire engines?  Where is the
noise and clamour of an event like this?
Where are the strangers going out of their
way to help, screaming, flinging bits of
emergency glow-in-the-dark equipment
at us to try and settle us and save us?

There should be men in helmets speaking
a new and dramatic language of crisis.
There should be horrible levels of noise,
completely foreign and inappropriate for
our cosy London flat."
-Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter

"This is my thing about why I think relationships - boyfriends, friends, anything - are such a hassle.  I've lived for almost seventeen years.  This is so much to catch somebody up about.  I want people just to arrive in my life fully informed of my tastes and fears.  The lists are pretty short, definitely memorizable.  I wish they could be distributed to would-be suitors ahead of time, so they could rule themselves out.  Or in!  I'm open to "in," too!"
-Unknown

"He wondered why we can't remember when our mothers carried us inside them:  the dark and steady heart, how it was the whole of the world, and no one harmed us, and we harmed no one."
-The Winner's Kiss by Marie Rutkoski

"But for the most part, it's the rest of the sharp and rigid world that wants to drown you, knock your teeth out, cave your skull in when you're going down.  I develop a new consciousness, at all times wondering, What am I near?  What would it do to my body if I fell on it/into it right now?  I learn you can't trust coffee table corners, rooftop edges.  You can't trust urinals either - massive grinning underbites that would get a good laugh out of leaving me to be discovered unconscious, pants down, molars scattered across the linoleum.  Hard things, tall things, and wet things - double-crossing murders.  Bathtubs are my personal nemesis though - hard, wet, and untrustworthy.  Porcelain caskets.  For a while we crack the doors during my baths so my parents can rush in if they hear splashing.  Then I switch to showers altogether."
-How To Ruin Everything by George Watsky

"Because I want the chance to cry when it rains." 
-The Square Root of Summer by Harriet Reuter Hapgood

"But this is darkness.  This is grief and graves."
-The Square Root of Summer by Harriet Reuter Hapgood

"His kiss interrupts me, sudden-short-sweet.  Unquestionable.  It feels like reading a favorite book, and falling for the ending even though you already know what happens." 
-The Square Root of Summer by Harriet Reuter Hapgood

"That's what boys do.  They leave, and when they come back, act like it's no big deal."
-The Square Root of Summer by Harriet Reuter Hapgood

"This version is a hundred feet taller and has arms.  Obviously he had arms before, but not like this.  Not like you had to think about them in italics."
-The Square Root of Summer by Harriet Reuter Hapgood

"I could feel my pulse fluttering beneath his fingertips, and I had to remind myself that I knew how to breathe, that I'd been doing it my whole life."
-The Unexpected Everything by Morgan Matson

"Explain to me what the point of living is if you aren't willing to fight for the truths in your heart, to risk getting hurt.

You have to rage."
-This Raging Light by Estelle Laure

"I wish someone had told me this simple but confusing truth: Even when everything's going your way you can still be sad.  Or anxious.  Or uncomfortably numb.  Because you can't always control your brain or your emotions even when things are perfect."
-Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things by Jenny Lawson

"It was thrilling to hear him pronounce my name.  It doesn't matter how simply your name is; it's always a surprise to hear it spoken aloud for the first time by someone new, how the specific arrangement of syllables sounds coming out of their mouth...He said it like it was the first time he'd said 'Harriet' in his life.  Like it was a word he'd never thought about, or needed to know before, but that he would from now on."
-Dear Emma by Katie Heaney

"There's nothing scarier than hearing someone you love cry, except imagining a world where that sound stops.  Suddenly I can't breathe.  Can't be here.  There's nothing scarier than loving someone."
-The Love That Split the World by Emily Henry

"'You don't know everything,' he says softly.  'Not yet you don't.  And when you see those good things - and I promise you, there are so many good things - they're going to be so much brighter for you than they are for other people, just like the abyss seems deeper and bigger when you stare at it.  If you stick it out, it's all going to feel worth it in the end.  Every moment you live, every darkness you face, they'll all feel worth it when you're staring light in the face.'"
-The Love That Split the World by Emily Henry

"It was only three years ago, but I looked so young, with that carefree smile."
-The Start of Me and You by Emery Lord

"Even the constellations can see us now:  we are seventeen and shattered and still dancing.  We have messy, throbbing hearts, and we are stronger than anyone could ever know."
-When We Collided by Emery Lord

"After all, artists - especially writers - need more alone time than regular people.  They crave solitude whereas many people fear it.  They resign themselves to financial uncertainty whereas most people do anything they can to avoid it.  Moreover, if an artist is lucky, her work becomes her legacy, thus theoretically lessening the burden of producing a child to carry it out."
-Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the decision Not to Have Kids  by Meghan Daum

"it has been a beautiful
fight

still
is."
-You Get So Alone at Times by Charles Bukowski

"If she could stand it, I'd tell her that sometimes she can be pretty funny - in a Maggie Smith-ish way - and has a kind of grit I don't see in many other women.  I'd tell her I'm no longer secretly trying to change her, to make her more outgoing or liberal or spendy.

I want her to know I have learned the difference between pampering and love, adventure and life experience, mothers and fathers.

I see now what she did for my dad and me, how she let our relationship stay simple and uncomplicated by drawing the fouls and taking the hits.  It was her gift to me as a girl in the world, and I will give the same gift to my daughters. 

I want her to know that I have seen how the light changes over the course of the day and I know that the rooms that start cold get warmer.

I'd tell her that I know now that there are no daughters who never embarrass, harass, dismiss, discount, deceive, neglect, baffle, appall, incite, or insult their mothers. 

I want her to know that although I vote for Democrats and cry easily and still spend all my money going to places no one ever needs to go, I hate shopping and cooking.  I live within my means and worship my girlfriends, especially the ones who play cards and rag me about keeping the thermostat set too low.  I don't long for other mothers anymore; I don't even wonder about them.  I was meant to be her daughter, and I consider it a damn good thing that she, or all people, was the principal agent in my development. 

I want to tell my mom that I admire her, the quiet hero of 168 Wooded Lane the way she marched head-on into each uncertain moment, changing as the circumstances demanded, like finding a good-paying job at forty-eight with three kids in college. 

Even though I don't always know what she's talking about or why something bothers her or what's making her smile, it doesn't matter, I don't care anymore, I love her."
-Glitter and Glue: A Memoir by Kelly Corrigan

"The thing about mothers, I want to say, is that once the containment ends and one becomes two, you don't always fit together so neatly.  They don't get you like you want them to, like you think they should, they could, if only they would pay closer attention.  They agonize over all the wrong things, cycling trough one inane idea after another: seat belts, flossing, the Golden Rule.  The living mother-daughter relationship, you learn over and over again, is a constant choice between adaptation and acceptance."
-Glitter and Glue: A Memoir by Kelly Corrigan

"'You could rattle the stars,' she whispered.  'You could do anything, if you only dared.  And deep down, you know it, too.  That's what scares you most.'"
-Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas

"'I'm not afraid of dying.  But I am afraid of dying here.'  She swept her hand over the room, the tavern, the city.  'I'd rather die on an adventure than live standing still."
-A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab

"I have been made to protect you.  Only in death will I be kept from this oath." 
-Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo

"For just one second, look at your life and see how perfect it is.  Stop looking for the next secret door that is going to lead you to your real life.  Stop waiting.  That is it:  there's nothing else.  It's here, and you'd better decide to enjoy it or you're going to be miserable wherever you go, for the rest of your life, forever."
-The Magicians by Lev Grossman

"She is catalyst.

She is chaos.

I can see why he loves her."
-Illuminae by Jay Kristoff and Amie Kaufman

"You all know fear is poison in battle."
-Illuminae by Jay Kristoff and Amie Kaufman

"'I never promised the universe that I would be a great writer, goddamn it!  I just promised the universe that I would be a writer'"

At seventy-five pages in, I nearly stopped.  It felt too terrible to continue, too deeply embarrassing.  But I pushed through my own shame only because I decided that I refused to go to my grave with seventy-five pages of an unfinished manuscript sitting in my desk drawer.  I did not want to be that person.  The world is filled with too many unfinished manuscripts as it is, and I didn't want to add another one to that bottomless pile.  So no matter how much I thought my work stank, I had to persist.

I also kept remembering what my mother always used to say: 'Done is better than good.'"
-Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

"I think it was my parents' example of quietly impudent self-assertion that gave me the idea that I could be a writer, or at least that I could go out there and try.  I never recall my parents expressing any worry whatsoever at my dreams of becoming a writer.  If they did worry, they kept quiet about it - but honestly, I don't think they were concerned.  I think they had faith that I would always be able to take care of myself, because they had taught me to.  (Anyhow, the golden rule in my family is this: If you're supporting yourself financially and you're not bothering anyone else, then you're free to do whatever you want with your life.)

Maybe because they didn't worry too much about me, I didn't worry too much about me, either.

It also never occurred to me to go ask an authority figure for permission to become a writer."
-Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

"And that would be a pity, because your life is short and rare and amazing and miraculous, and you want to do really interesting things and make really interesting things while you're still here.  I know that's what you want for yourself, because that's what I want for myself, too.

It's what we all want. 

And you have treasures hidden within you - extraordinary treasures - and so do I, and so does everyone around us.  And bringing those treasures to light takes work and faith and focus and courage and hours of devotion, and the clock is ticking, and the world is spinning, and we simply do not have time anymore to think so small."
-Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

"It isn't always comfortable or easy - carrying your fear around with you on your great and ambitious road trip, I mean - but it's always worth it, because if you can't learn to travel comfortably alongside your fear, then you'll never be able to go anywhere interesting or do anything interesting."
-Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

"If you're lucky, home is not only a place you leave, but also a place where you someday arrive."
-Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own by Kate Bolick

"If you're a daughter, your mother's face is your first mirror, and if you share her features - in our case hazel eyes, brown hair, a serious amount of freckles, a small frame with those 'narrow shoulders held erect' - odds are you'll unconsciously adopt her attitude of self-regard.  My mother considered herself to be plain, if not homely, and so I believed her, and so I considered myself...I carried this phantom twin wherever I went, no matter that I couldn't have been more different myself..."
-Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own by Kate Bolick

"I wondered what my childhood home might reveal about me to a stranger.  It never ceases to astonish me how readily we presume to know ourselves, when in fact we know so little."
-Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own by Kate Bolick

"Besides, I decided, isn't that how falling in love so often works?  Some stranger appears out of nowhere and becomes a fixed star in your universe." 
-Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own by Kate Bolick

"Eventually, whether you choose or are chosen, joyously accept or grudgingly resist, you take the plunge.

You are born, you grow up, you become a wife.

But what if it wasn't this way?

What if a girl grew up like a boy, with marriage an abstract, someday thought, a thing to think about when she became an adult, a thing she could do, or not do, depending?

What would that look and feel like?"
 -Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own by Kate Bolick

"After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world."
-Philip Pullman