Into the Wild

"He wasn't antisocial — he always had friends, and everybody liked him — but he could go off and entertain himself for hours. He didn't seem to need toys or friends. He could be alone without being lonely."

Into the Wild, pg. 107
By Jon Krakauer
Published 1996

 

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