The Age of Miracles

"It requires a certain kind of bravery, I suppose, to choose the status quo. There's a certain boldness to inaction." 

The Age of Miracles, p. 83
By Karen Thompson Walker
Published 2012

 

Looking for Alaska

"I thought about the slow process of becoming bone and then fossil and then coal that will, in millions of years, be mined by humans of the future, and how they would heat their homes with her, and then she would be smoke billowing out of a smokestack, coating the atmosphere. I still think that, sometimes, think that maybe 'the afterlife' is just something we made up to ease the pain of loss, to make our time in the labyrinth bearable. Maybe she was just matter, and matter gets recycled."

Looking for Alaska, pp. 219-20

By John Green

Published 2005

Sisterland

"On average, an earthquake of magnitude 6 or greater happens somewhere in the world every three days. Mostly, they happen underwater, and we hardly take notice. It is only when the earthquake comes to us, upending the streets and houses and trees we think of as ours, that they command our attention. But the earth...is always busy."

Sisterland, pp. 389-90
By Curtis Sittenfeld

Published 2013

Gone Girl

"The truth is malleable; you just need to pick the right expert."   

Gone Girl, p. 190

By Gillian Flynn
Published 2012

The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place

"We laughed, and I decided that we were the two most sophisticated people drinking lattes at a little round table on the pedestrian mall in all of Epiphany and possibly France."

The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place, p. 214
By E.L. Konigsburg
Published 2004

Girl, Interrupted

"It was my misfortune - or salvation - to be at all times perfectly conscious of my misperceptions of reality... This clarity made me able to behave normally, which posed some interesting questions. Was everybody seeing this stuff and acting as though they weren't? Was insanity just a matter of dropping the act? If some people didn't see these things, what was the matter with them? Were they blind or something? These questions had me unsettled."

Girl, Interrupted, p. 41-42

By Susanna Kaysen

Published 1993

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

"I've heard that theory of the Therapeutic Community enough times to repeat it forwards and backwards - how a guy has to learn to get along in a group before he'll be able to function in a normal society; how the group can help the guy by showing him where he's out of place; how society is what decides who's sane and who isn't, so you got to measure up. All that stuff." 

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, p. 44

By Ken Kesey

Published 1962

J.D. Salinger: A Life

"When Salinger lived in Connecticut, unabashed Americanism and materialism were unquestioned values. His neighbors pursued those values religiously and weighed one another against a standard of conformity that often suffocated individuality. Salinger found such material irresistible. Having long exposed the phoniness of society, he now found himself living in a culture that not only esteemed this quality he so despised but also sought to infect all of its members with it."

J.D. Salinger: A Life, pp. 168-169

By Kenneth Slawenski 

Published 2011

The View from Saturday

"I am a passenger on Spaceship Earth." 

The View from Saturday, p. 73
By E. L. Konigsburg
Published 1996