Death: A Life

"I feel that I have important things to do, and important things to say, and I want to share them with all Creation, I just don't know what they are exactly. But I can feel something. My true calling is buried deep inside me, I know it is! I just don't know how to get at it. Can you tell me? Can You help me understand my true role in existence? Can You tell me what I'm doing here?"

Death: A Life, p. 40
By George Pendle
Published 2008

The Giver

"He found he was often angry, now: irrationally angry at his groupmates, that they were satisfied with their lives which had none of the vibrance his own was taking on. And he was angry at himself, that he could not change that for them."

The Giver, p. 99
By Lois Lowry
Published 1993

Anna Karenina

"Anna Arkadyevna read and understood; but it was distasteful to her to read, that is, to follow the reflections of other people's lives. She had too great a desire to live herself. If she read that the heroine of the novel was nursing a sick man, she longed to move with noiseless steps about the room of a sick man; if she read of a member of Parliament making a speech, she longed to be delivering the speech; if she read of how Lady Mary had ridden after the hounds, and had provoked her sister-in-law, and had surprised every one by her boldness, she too wished to be doing the same. But there was no chance of doing anything; and twisting the smooth paper-knife in her little hands, she forced herself to read."

Anna Karenina, p. 91
By Leo Tolstoy
Published 1877

Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut

"Well, he sort of had his hand on my stomach. You know. Anyway, all of a sudden he said my stomach was so beautiful he wished some officer would come up and order him to stick his other hand through the window. He said he wanted to do what was fair. Then he took his hand away and told the conductor to throw his shoulders back. He told him if there was one thing he couldn't stand it was a man who didn't look proud of his uniform."

Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut from Nine Stories, p. 30
By J.D. Salinger
Published 1948

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

"What happened was: they became a team, a family of two. There had been many times before they ran away when they had acted like a team, but those were very different from feeling like a team. Becoming a team didn't mean the end of their arguments. But it did mean that the arguments became a part of the adventure, became discussions not threats. To an outsider the arguments would appear to be the same because feeling like part of a team is something that happens invisibly. You might call it caring. You could even call it love."

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, p. 39
By E.L. Konigsburg
Published 1967