C.S. Lewis

"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."

C.S. Lewis

James Baldwin

"Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up."

James Baldwin

Nicholas Sparks

"I fell in love, despite our differences, and once I did, something rare and beautiful was created. For me, love like that has only happened once, and that's why every minute we spent together has been seared in my memory. I'll never forget a single moment of it."

Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook)

Chuck Palahniuk

"We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will."

Chuck Palahniuk

Albert Einstein

"Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy."

Albert Einstein

Robert Frost

"Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length."

Robert Frost

(Aside: a friend commented that she had read this wrong. I replied, that as well :p)

Diane Setterfield

"There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic... "

Diane Setterfield (The Thirteenth Tale)

Aldous Huxley

"Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly -- they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced."

Aldous Huxley (Brave New World)

Clement Freud

'If you resolve to give up smoking, drinking & loving, you don't ACTUALLY live longer; it just seems that way ... "

Clement Freud

Tamora Pierce

"They always forget the last part of that saying: curiosity killed the cat but satisfaction brought it back" - or something to that effect anyway."

Tamora Pierce

Virginia Woolf

"For it would seem - her case proved it - that we write, not with the fingers, but with the whole person. The nerve which controls the pen winds itself about every fibre of our being, threads the heart, pierces the liver."

Virginia Woolf (Orlando)

Gore Vidal

"Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half."

Gore Vidal

Stephen Jay Gould

"We pass through this world but once. Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within."

Stephen Jay Gould (The Mismeasure of Man)

Markus Zusak

"Maybe everyone can live beyond what they're capable of."

Markus Zusak (I Am the Messenger)

W. Somerset Maugham

"He did not care if she was heartless, vicious and vulgar, stupid and grasping, he loved her. He would rather have misery with one than happiness with the other."

W. Somerset Maugham (Of Human Bondage)