• The Gravedigger's Daughter, Joyce Carol Oates:

"Not the thin pale froth-sleep that washed over her aching brain and brought little nourishment but the deeper more profound sleep she required, the sleep that slowed your heartbeat toward death, the sleep that stripped from you all awareness of time, place, who you are or have ever been."

• Letters to God, Patrick Doughtie and John Perry:

"Prayer is just telling God what's in your heart and asking him to help you with it."

• Beasts, Joyce Carol Oates:

"Sometimes you fall in love without knowing. Without realizing. And it's too late, and you can't undo it."

• the War of Art, Steven Pressfield:

"The professional cannot allow the actions of others to define his reality. Tomorrow morning the critic will be gone, but the writer will still be there facing the blank page. Nothing matters but that he keep working. Short of a family crisis or the outbreak of World War III, the professional shows up, ready to serve the gods."

• The Believers, Zoe Heller

"Whatever malaise hung over this house could not be attributed to poverty, he thought. Cleanliness cost nothing, after all. His own parents, poor as they were, had always kept a spotless home."

• I Stopped Telling Lies on Facebook, Sarah Tuttle-Singer (this is actually from a magazine article in Ladies' Home Journal, March 2014 but it still qualifies as some of my favorite words printed)

"When you're wasting time online, the seconds slip by too quickly. We were on a repeat showing of Beauty and the Beast when the Internet went out. My window to the outside world had closed. Now I had to actually spend my entire day with the kids. And here's the dirty little secret that I'll never admit on Facebook: Although I love my kids every freaking second (Would I die for them? You bet. Would I kill for them? Hurt my child, and I will cut you.), I don't always want to be with them."

• My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante

"Nowhere is it written that you can't do it."

• April and Oliver, Tess Callahan

“Only now, two months later, does it dawn on her. If she stops in the coffee shop where they used to meet on Sunday mornings, he will never be there. When the phone rings, it will never be him. People say the dead linger, that you feel their love in quiet, intangible ways. But it’s not true. April feels nothing but the absolute nature of his absence.”

• The Satanic Bible, Anton Szandor LaVey

“The Satanist shuns terms such as ‘hope’ and ‘prayer’ as they are indicative of apprehension. If we hope and pray for something to come about, we will not act in a positive way which will make it happen. The Satanist, realizing that anything he gets is of his own doing, takes command of the situation instead of praying to God for it to happen. Positive thinking and positive action add up to results.”