"I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day." — Vincent Van Gogh

"When she came to write her story, she would wonder exactly when the books and the words started to mean not just something, but everything." — Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

"To be understood is to prostitute yourself." — Fernando Pessoa

"Sadness gives depth. Happiness gives height. Sadness gives roots. Happiness gives branches. Happiness is like a tree going into the sky, and sadness is like the roots going down into the womb of the earth. Both are needed, and the higher a tree goes, the deeper it goes, simultaneously. The bigger the tree, the bigger will be its roots. In fact, it is always in proportion. That’s its balance." — Osho

"I am a dreamer. I know so little of real life that I just can’t help re-living such moments as these in my dreams, for such moments are something I have very rarely experienced. I am going to dream about you the whole night, the whole week, the whole year." — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

"People go on saying that they want to become happy, but I rarely come across a person who really wants to be happy. People cling to their misery. Again the same game. With the misery you have something to do. With the misery, some occupation. With the misery you can avoid yourself, you are engaged. With joy there is nothing with which to be engaged, there is nowhere to go. In joy you again disperse and disappear. In misery you are there — you are very much there. Misery gives you a very solid experience that you are. When you are happy, you start disappearing. When you are really happy, you are not, again you are not. In a state of bliss, again you disappear." — Osho

"I actually attack the concept of happiness. The idea that - I don’t mind people being happy - but the idea that everything we do is part of the pursuit of happiness seems to me a really dangerous idea and has led to a contemporary disease in Western society, which is fear of sadness. It’s a really odd thing that we’re now seeing people saying “write down 3 things that made you happy today before you go to sleep”, and “cheer up” and “happiness is our birthright” and so on. We’re kind of teaching our kids that happiness is the default position - it’s rubbish. Wholeness is what we ought to be striving for and part of that is sadness, disappointment, frustration, failure; all of those things which make us who we are. Happiness and victory and fulfillment are nice little things that also happen to us, but they don’t teach us much. Everyone says we grow through pain and then as soon as they experience pain they say “Quick! Move on! Cheer up!” I’d like just for a year to have a moratorium on the word “happiness” and to replace it with the word “wholeness”. Ask yourself “is this contributing to my wholeness?” and if you’re having a bad day, it is." — Hugh Mackay

"At the bottom of her heart, however, she was waiting for something to happen. Like shipwrecked sailors, she turned despairing eyes upon the solitude of her life, seeking afar off some white sail in the mists of the horizon." — Gustave Flaubert

"I’ve been making a list of the things they don’t teach you at school. They don’t teach you how to love somebody. They don’t teach you how to be famous. They don’t teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don’t teach you how to walk away from someone you don’t love any longer. They don’t teach you how to know what’s going on in someone else’s mind. They don’t teach you what to say to someone who’s dying. They don’t teach you anything worth knowing." — Neil Gaiman

"His eyes pierce mine and for a moment I feel as if the rest of the world is closed out and it’s just the two of us. The urge to jump into his arms and feel the warmth of them surrounding me is so powerful, I wonder if it’s medically possible to be addicted to another human being." — Perfect Chemistry By Simone

"What can I do with my happiness? How can I keep it, conceal it, bury it where I may never lose it? I want to kneel as it falls over me like rain, gather it up with lace and silk, and press it over myself again." — Anaïs Nin

"Plant your own garden and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers." — Veronica A. Shoffstall

"I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness." — Franz Kafka

"She’s never where she is,” I said. “She’s only inside her head." — Janet Fitch, White Oleander

"Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings — always darker, emptier, simpler." — Nietzsche

"Open your mouth only if what you are going to say is more beautiful than silence." — Arabic Proverb

"I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul." — Pablo Neruda

"There are books so alive that you’re always afraid that while you weren’t reading, the book has gone and changed, has shifted like a river; while you went on living, it went on living too, and like a river moved on and moved away. No one has stepped twice into the same river. But did anyone ever step twice into the same book?" — Marina Tsvetaeva

"The past is beautiful because one never realizes an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don’t have have complete emotions about the present, only about the past… That is why we dwell on the past, I think." — Virginia Woolf, To The Lighthouse

"She glanced up at him, wondering if it was the sadness of other people that made you fall in love with them, the weight they carried that first turned you in their direction." — Pamela Ball

"You didn’t know it, but I slept with you last night. My pillow was your cheek and I caressed it. My mattress was your body, and I touched you. My blanket was your love, and it kept me warm. Did you sleep with me last night? Did you wake up with me in the morning? Did you receive my kisses I sent by sunbeams?" — Ranulfo, The Book Joker

“Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I’m not living.” — Jonathan Safran Foer, from “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”