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

For Esmé – with Love and Squalor

"He was rather like a Christmas tree whose lights, wired in series, must all go out if even one bulb is defective."

For Esmé – with Love and Squalor from Nine Stories, p. 106

By J.D. Salinger

Published 1950

Alice in Wonderland

"For, you see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible."

Alice in Wonderland, p. 11
By Lewis Carroll
Published 1865

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

Slaughterhouse-Five

"Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber? Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why."

Slaughterhouse-Five, pp. 76-77
By Kurt Vonnegut
Published 1969

The Bell Jar

"The silence depressed me. It wasn't the silence of silence. It was my own silence. I knew perfectly well the cars were making a noise, and the people in them and behind the lit windows of the buildings were making a noise, and the river was making a noise, but I couldn't hear a thing. The city hung in my window, flat as a poster, glittering and blinking, but it might as well not have been there at all, for the good it did me."

The Bell Jar, pp. 18-19
By Sylvia Plath
Published 1963

Just Before the War with the Eskimos

"'I never in my life would've thought you could be so small about anything,'" said Selena, who was just angry enough to use the word "small" but not quite brave enough to emphasize it."

Just Before the War with the Eskimos from Nine Stories, p. 42
By J.D. Salinger
Published 1953

Fahrenheit 451

Photo: Here

"Don't give them slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy. Any man who can take a TV wall apart and put it back together again, and most men can, nowadays, is happier than any man who tried to slide-rule, measure, and equate the universe, which just won't be measured or equated without making man feel bestial and lonely. I know, I've tried it; to hell with it. So bring on your clubs and parties, your acrobats and magicians, your daredevils, jet cars, motorcycle helicopters, your sex and heroin, more of everything to do with automatic reflex. If the drama is bad, if the film says nothing, if the play is hollow, sting me with the theremin, loudly. I'll think I'm responding to the play, when it's only a tactile reaction to vibration. But I don't care. I just like solid entertainment."

Fahrenheit 451, p. 61

By Ray Bradbury

Published 1953

Zooey

 

"Somewhere in The Great Gatsby (which was my Tom Sawyer when I was twelve), the youthful narrator remarks that everybody suspects himself of having at least one of the cardinal virtues, and he goes on to say that he thinks his, bless his heart, is honesty. Mine, I think, is that I know the difference between a mystical story and a love story. I say that my current offering isn't a mystical story, or a religiously mystifying story, at all. I say it's a compound, or multiple, love story, pure and complicated."

Zooey, p. 49
By J.D. Salinger
Published 1957

Franny

Photo: Here and here.

"At that moment, though, he chanced to look up from the table and see someone he knew across the room - a classmate, with a date. Lane sat up a bit in his chair and adjusted his expression from that of all-around apprehension and discontent to that of a man whose date has merely gone to the john, leaving him, as dates do, with nothing to do in the meantime but smoke and look bored, preferably attractively bored."

Franny, p. 21
By J.D. Salinger
Published 1955

Ethan Frome

"The words went on sounding between them as though a torch of warning flew from hand to hand through a black landscape."

Ethan Frome, p. 105
By Edith Wharton
Published 1911

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters

"Why, then, did I go on sitting in the car? Why didn't I get out while, say, we were stopped for a red light? ... There seems to me at least a dozen answers to these questions, and all of them, however dimly, valid enough. I think, though, that I can dispense with them, and just reiterate that the year was 1942, that I was twenty-three, newly drafted, newly advised in the efficacy of keeping close to the herd - and, above all, I felt lonely. One simply jumped into loaded cars, as I see it, and stayed seated in them." - Buddy Glass

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, p. 25
By J.D. Salinger
Published 1963

Seymour: An Introduction

"They may shine with the misinformation of the ages, but they shine."

Seymour: An Introduction, p. 213
By J.D. Salinger
Published 1963

Dandelion Wine

Photo: TFS

"Kindness and intelligence are the preoccupations of age. Being cruel and thoughless is far more fascinating when you're twenty." -Helen Loomis

Dandelion Wine, p. 147
By Ray Bradbury
Published 1957

The Poisonwood Bible

"According to my Baptist Sunday-school teachers, a child is denied entrance to heaven merely for being born in the Congo rather than, say, north Georgia, where she could attend church regularly. This was a sticking point in my own little lame march to salvation: admission to heaven is gained by the luck of the draw." -Adah Price

The Poisonwood Bible, pg. 171
By Barbara Kingsolver
Published 1998