The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

"He was like a man who had served a term in prison or had been to Harvard College or had lived for a long time with foreigners in South America. He was like a person who had been somewhere that other people are not likely to go or had done something that others are not apt to do." 

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, p. 21
By Carson McCullers
Published 1940

 

Beatrice and Virgil

"Colonialism is a terrible bane for a people upon whom it is imposed, but a blessing for a language. English's drive to exploit the new and the alien, its zeal in robbing words from other languages, its incapability to feel qualms over the matter, its museum-size overabundance of vocabulary, its shoulder-shrug approach to spelling, its don't-worry-be-happy concern for grammar - the result was a language whose colour and wealth Henry loved."

Beatrice and Virgil, p. 23
By Yann Martel
Published 2010

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

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

The Abstinence Teacher

"I'm halfway through my life, and as far as I can tell, the real lesson of the past isn't that I made some mistakes, it's that I didn't make nearly enough of them." 

The Abstinence Teacher, p. 264
By Tom Perrotta
Published 2007

How to Buy a Love of Reading

 "'He's self-invented. Thinks he's self-contained. Drinks to ignore his seepage. I feel truly sorry for him. He's very young to be so lonely.' 

'Lonely? You know nothing. He's—' 

'People who make fiction of themselves can't be otherwise.'" 

How to Buy a Love of Reading, p. 124 

By Tanya Egan Gibson

Published 2006

The Fault in Our Stars

"I believe the universe wants to be noticed. I think the universe is improbably biased toward consciousness, that it rewards intelligence in part because the universe enjoys its elegance being observed."

The Fault in Our Stars, p. 223
By John Green
Published 2012

The Marriage Plot

Source: LPH

"In Madeleine's face was a stupidity Mitchell had never seen before. It was the stupidity of all normal people. It was the stupidity of the fortunate and beautiful, of everybody who got what they wanted in life and so remained unremarkable."

The Marriage Plot, p. 77
By Jeffery Eugenides
Published 2011

A Visit from the Goon Squad

"I was working for the city as a janitor in a neighborhood elementary school and, in summer, collecting litter in the park alongside the East River near the Williamsburg Bridge. I felt no shame whatsoever in these activities, because I understood what almost no one else seemed to grasp: that there was only an infinitesimal difference, a difference so small that it barely existed except as a figment of the human imagination, between working in a tall green glass building on Park Avenue and collecting litter in a park. In fact, there may have been no difference at all."

A Visit from the Goon Squad, p. 71
By Jennifer Egan
Published 2010

Tuck Everlasting

"The ownership of land is an odd thing when you come to think of it. How deep, after all, can it go? If a person owns a piece of land, does he own it all the way down, in ever narrowing dimensions, till it meets all other pieces at the center of the earth? Or does ownership consist of only a thin crust under which the friendly worms have never heard of trespassing?"

Tuck Everlasting, p. 7
By Natalie Babbit
Published 1975

The Westing Game

"All quotations were either from the Bible or Shakespeare."

The Westing Game, p. 51
By Ellen Raskin
Published 1978

The House on Mango Street

"People who live on hills sleep so close to the stars they forget those of us who live too much on earth. They don't look down at all except to be content to live on hills. They have nothing to do with last week's garbage or fear of rats. Night comes. Nothing wakes them but the wind."

Bums in the Attic from The House on Mango Street, pp. 86-87
By Sandra Cisneros
Published 1984

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

"She called Joseph the desert, one summer afternoon when we were all walking along the Santa Monica Pier, because, she explained, he was an ecosystem that simply needed less input."

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, p. 52
By Aimee Bender
Published 2010

Mick Harte Was Here

 "You know, like at first you have this gut reaction to something and you're positive that you're totally right. Only after a while, it creeps into your mind that the other guy may actually have a point. Then the next thing you know, his point's making more sense than your point. Which is totally annoying. But still, it happens."

Mick Harte Was Here, p. 79
By Barbara Park
Published 1995

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

"It's kind of like when you look at yourself in the mirror and you say your name. And it gets to the point where none of it seems real. Well, sometimes, I can do that, but I don't need an hour in front of a mirror. It happens very fast, and things start to slip away. And I just open my eyes, and I see nothing. And then I start to breathe really hard trying to see something, but I can't. It doesn't happen all the time, but when it does, it scares me."

The Perks of Being a Wallflower, p. 74
By Stephen Chbosky
Published 1999

White Oleander

"If evil means to be self-motivated, to be the center of one's own universe, to live on one's own terms, then every artist, every thinker, every original mind, is evil. Because we dare to look through our own eyes rather than mouth clichés lent us from so-called Fathers. To dare to see is to steal fire from the Gods. This is mankind's destiny, the engine which fuels us as a race. Three cheers for Eve."

White Oleander, pp. 66-67
By Janet Fitch
Published 1999