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

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

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