• “I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart; I am, I am, I am.”

—Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

• “At the still point, there the dance is.”

—T. S. Eliot

• “The curves of your lips rewrite history.”

—Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

• “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

—William Shakespeare, Hamlet

• “She was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world.”

—Kate Chopin, “The Awakening”

• “We cross our bridges as we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and the presumption that once our eyes watered.”

—Tom Stoppard, Rosencratz and Guildenstern Are Dead

• “I celebrate myself, and sing myself.”

—Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

• “Tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it yet.”

—L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

• “I would always rather be happy than dignified.”

—Charlotte Brontë , Jane Eyre

• "And we swagger because we do not know how to part with our rage, which we cherish and press cutting close, but we learn to swagger — or rather, we’re swaggered, briefly, while the wind blows and things burn and our hands are full"