Some of my favorite quotes from the books I've read in 2017

• A consequence of snatching images out of the air - the air took something back. (What is not yours is not yours, Helen Oyeyemi).
• With boys there was a fundamental assumption that they had a right to be there - not Always, but more often than not. With girls, Why her? came up so quickly. (What is not yours is not yours, Helen Oyeyemi).
• a discourse running oddly and fantastically, from one matter to another. (What is not yours is not yours, Helen Oyeyemi).
• It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are. - e.e. cummings (I'll Give You The Sun, Jandy Nelson).
• But sometimes I think that Dad suspects. Sometimes I think the toaster suspects. (I'll Give You The Sun, Jandy Nelson).
• “The best thing would be to break your neck, but you'd probably just break your leg and then you couldn't do a thing. You'd yell at the top of your lungs, but nobody would hear you, and you couldn't expect anyone to find you, and you'd have centipedes and spiders crawling all over you, and the bones of the ones who died before are scattered all around you, and it's dark and soggy, and high overhead there's this tiny, tiny circle of light like a winter moon. You die there in this place, little by little, all by yourself.” (Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami).
• “I straightened up and looked out of the window at the dark clouds hanging over the North Sea, thinking of all I had lost in the course of my life: times gone for ever, friends who had died or disappeared, feelings I would never know again” (Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami).
• “I was at that age, that time of life when every sight, every feeling, every thought came back, like a boomerang, to me.” (Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami).
• “I lose track of what I was trying to say to begin with. It's like I'm split in two and playing tag with myself.” (Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami).
• “What happens when people open their hearts?" Reiko clasped her hands together on the table, cigarette dangling from her lips. She was enjoying this. "They get better," she said.” _(Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami).__
• “Death exists, not as the opposite but as a part of life” (Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami).
• “Continuei, a tal ponto que o menor gesto me afligia, a mais ínfima palavra, uma insistência qualquer; muita vez só a indiferença bastava. Cheguei a ter ciúmes de tudo e de todos” (Dom Casmurro, Machado de Assis).
• “Peer pressure, in other words, is not only unpleasant, but can actually change your view of a problem. These early findings suggest that groups are like mind-altering substances. If the group thinks the answer is A, you’re much more likely to believe that A is correct, too.” (Quiet, Susan Cain).
• “I have naturally formed the habit of restraining my thoughts. A thoughtless word hardly ever escaped my tongue or pen. Experience has taught me that silence is part of the spiritual discipline of a votary of truth. We find so many people impatient to talk. All this talking can hardly be said to be of any benefit to the world. It is so much waste of time. My shyness has been in reality my shield and buckler. It has allowed me to grow. It has helped me in my discernment of truth.” - Ghandi (Quiet, Susan Cain).
• “The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances; if there is any reaction, both are transformed. —CARL JUNG” (Quiet, Susan Cain).
• “Our culture made a virtue of living only as extroverts. We discouraged the inner journey, the quest for a center. So we lost our center and have to find it again. —ANAÏS NIN” (Quiet, Susan Cain).
• “They’re talking to one another in easy voices about things of great significance and things that don’t mean much. The distance between us and all of that living feels insurmountable.” (We Are Okay, Nina LaCour).
• “She leans over our table and turns the sign in the window so that it says CLOSED on the outside. But on our side, perfectly positioned between Mabel’s place and mine, it says OPEN. If this were a short story, it would mean something” (We Are Okay, Nina LaCour).
• “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” (Anna Karenina, Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy)
• “That's your strong point and your failing. You have a character that's all of a piece, and you want the whole of life to be of a piece too—but that's not how it is” (Anna Karenina, Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy)
• “What right had I to imagine she would care to join her life to mine. Whom am I and what am I? A nobody, not wanted by any one, nor of use to anybody.”__(Anna Karenina, Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy)__
• “Anna Arkadyevna read and understood, but it was distasteful to her to read, that is, to follow the reflection of other people's lives. She had too great a desire to live herself” (Anna Karenina, Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy)
• “There had been in his past, as in every man's, actions, recognized by him as bad, for which his conscience ought to have tormented him; but the memory of these evil actions was far from causing him so much suffering as those trivial but humiliating reminiscences” (Anna Karenina, Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy)
• “But she was not likely to be attractive to men. She was like a fine flower, already past its bloom and without fragrance, though the petals were still unwithered” (Anna Karenina, Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy).
• “It showed him the mistake men make in picturing to themselves happiness as the realization of their desires” (Anna Karenina, Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy).
• “He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and she began” (Anna Karenina, Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy).
• “My whole life apart from anything that can happen to me, every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before, but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it.” (Anna Karenina, Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy).
• “I didn’t much care what he did so long as he remained the exact same person with others as he was with me. Don’t let him be someone else when he’s away. Don’t let him be someone I’ve never seen before. Don’t let him have a life other than the life I know he has with us, with me. Don’t let me lose him” (Call Me by Your Name, André Aciman).
• “But there was something at once chilling and off-putting in the sudden distance that crept between us in the most unexpected moments” (Call Me by Your Name, André Aciman).
• “I wrote: I was exaggerating when I said I thought you hated the piece. What I meant to say was: I thought you hated me. I was hoping you’d persuade me of the opposite—and you did, for a while. Why won’t I believe it tomorrow morning?” (Call Me by Your Name, André Aciman).