• "Don’t let people treat you like a cigarette, they only use you when they’re bored and step on you when they’re done. Be like drugs, let them die for you."
• "I crave your legs intertwined with mine, I crave nothing but you, in the most simplest of ways."
• "To be loved, I think, is the thing that gets you up in the morning."

— Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Morning Edition, NPR April 2012

• "Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone - and finding that that’s ok with them."

— Alain de Botton

• "If someday the moon calls you by your name don’t be surprised,

Because every night I tell her about you." — Shahrazad al-Khalij

• "I am not a woman. I am an inferno, I am a tempest. I am venom and fangs and claws. I am lightning and starlight, and I am hell in high heels."
• "Why are old lovers able to become friends? Two reasons. They never truly loved each other, or they love each other still."

— Whitney Otto, How to Make an American Quilt

• "You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit."

— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

• "She never felt like she belonged anywhere, except for when she was laying on her bed, pretending to be somewhere else."

— Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor and Park

• "She reminded me of the sea; the way she came dancing towards you, wild and beautiful, and just when she was almost close enough to touch she’d rush away again."

— Glenda Millard, A Small Free Kiss in the Dark

• "Paris, hours in the café, a certain spirit of rebellion, one side a bit too stubborn, the sea, the true, in Bretagne, the walking in Provence, the taste, the passion for literature, the libraries, the beautiful editions, remaking the world in a set of hours around a table and a bottle of wine. Talking without really saying nothing, just for the pleasure of talking. The museums, the theatres, the elegance, the delicacy, the heritage of the Illustration, a humanistic philosophy. The balance we got between a nordic rigor and a latin savoir-vivre, the insolence and the freedom."

— Clémence Poésy: Your France?

• "An entire sea of water can’t sink a ship unless it gets inside the ship. Similarly, the negativity of the world can’t put you down unless you allow it to get inside you."

— Goi Nasu

• "Confidence is being able to say ‘Fuck you, I’m the shit’ without opening your mouth, say it with your walk, with your smile, say it with your entire being."

— Tati-Ana Mercedes

• "We travel for romance, we travel for architecture, and we travel to be lost."

— Ray Bradbury

• "He carries stars in his pockets because he knows she fears the dark. Whenever sadness pays her a visit, he paints galaxies on the back of her hands."

— Alaska Gold

• "Let someone love you just the way you are – as flawed as you might be, as unattractive as you sometimes feel, and as unaccomplished as you think you are. To believe that you must hide all the parts of you that are broken, out of fear that someone else is incapable of loving what is less than perfect, is to believe that sunlight is incapable of entering a broken window and illuminating a dark room."

— Marc Hack

• "Experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn. My god, do you learn."

— C. S. Lewis

• "My father had taught me to be nice first, because you can always be mean later, but once you’ve been mean to someone, they won’t believe the nice anymore. So be nice, be nice, until it’s time to stop being nice, then destroy them."

— Laurell K. Hamilton

• "You’d destroy me, and I’d let you."
• "I love people who are open-minded. People who just vibe with whatever you talk about. You can talk about anything and everything."
• "Honey, you’re a goddamn wildfire. You choose who you burn."

— Fortesa Latifi

• "I have sea foam in my veins, for I understand the language of waves."

— Le Testament d’Orphee

• "Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I’m gazing at a distant star. It’s dazzling, but the light is from tens of thousands of years ago. Maybe the star doesn’t even exist any more. Yet sometimes that light seems more real to me than anything."

— Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun

• "Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence. It inculcates purity and harmony, the mystery of mutual charity, the romanticism of the social order. It is essentially a worship of the Imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life."

— Kakuzō Okakura, The Book of Tea

• "Nothing is everything. In order to grow strong, you must first sink your roots deep into nothingness. Learn to face your loneliest loneliness."

— When Nietzsche Wept (2007) dir. by Pinchas Perry

• "You have two choices, to control your mind or to let your mind control you."

— Paulo Coelho, Veronika Decides to Die

• "It’s amazing how words can do that, just shred your insides apart."

— Lauren Oliver, Delirium

• "Write. Write until it stops hurting."
• "I have this weird obsession about buying books and looking at them with a smile, even if I won’t read them soon. At least they are mine now."
• "I either eat too much or starve myself. Sleep for 14 hours or have insomniac nights. Fall in love very hard or hate passionately. I don’t know what grey is. I never did."
• "I take pleasure in my transformations. I look quiet and consistent, but few know how many women there are in me."

— Anaïs Nin

• "Tomorrow is the first blank page of a 365 page book. Write a good one."
• "Say it before you run out of time. Say it before it’s too late. Say what you’re feeling. Waiting is a mistake."
• "Sometimes it’s not the people who change, it’s the mask that falls off."
• "I have a million things to talk to you about. All I want in this world is you. I want to see you and talk. I want the two of us to begin everything from the beginning."

— Haruki Murakami

• "I love winter,” he remarked one day. Why? she asked. “It gives me an excuse to be cold and distant, without anyone caring,” he replied."
• "When you are attracted to people, it’s because of the details. Their kindness. Their eyes. The fact that they can get you to laugh when you need it the most."

— Jodi Picoult, Sing You Home

• "But I don’t want comfort. I want poetry. I want danger. I want freedom. I want goodness. I want sin."

— Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

• "The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts while the stupid ones are full of confidence."

— Charles Bukowski

• "The years between eighteen and twenty-eight are the hardest, psychologically. It’s then you realize this is make or break, you no longer have the excuse of youth, and it is time to become an adult – but you are not ready."

— Helen Mirren

• "Don’t ever put your happiness in someone else’s hands. They’ll drop it. They’ll drop it every time."

— Christopher Barzak

• "Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable."
• "My point is: in this whole wide world the only person you can depend on is you."

— Haruki Murakami

• "I love you in a language that I don’t fully understand. In words that I haven’t found enough courage to forklift out of my chest."

— Rudy Francisco

• "The truth is, I pretend to be a cynic, but I am really a dreamer who is terrified of wanting something she may never get."

— Joanna Hoffman

• "The gods envy us. They envy us because we’re mortal, because any moment may be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again."

— Achilles (Troy)

• "I’m good at loving books. I’m good at loving soft bed sheets. I’m good at loving coffees and teas. I am good at loving things that can’t love me back, that don’t have the power to leave. And maybe, that’s why I love them."
• "I’d cut my soul into a million different pieces just to form a constellation to light your way home. I’d write love poems to the parts of yourself you can’t stand. I’d stand in the shadows of your heart and tell you I’m not afraid of your dark."

— Andrea Gibson

• "I told her once I wasn’t good at anything. She told me survival is a talent."

— Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted

• "Her sentences were icebergs, with just the tip of her thought coming out of her mouth, and the rest kept up in her head, which I was starting to think was more and more beautiful the longer I looked at her."

— Gregory Galloway, As Simple As Snow

• "I used to call people, then I got into e-mailing, then texting, and now I just ignore everyone."
• "Have you ever felt a potential love for someone?

Like, you don’t actually love them and you know you don’t, but you know you could. You realise that you could easily fall in love with them. It’s almost like the bud of a flower, ready to blossom but it’s just not quite there yet. And you like them a lot, you really do. You think about them often, but you don’t love them. You could, though. You know you could."

• "Freedom (n.): To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing."

— Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

• "I was ready to love the whole world, but no one understood me, and I learned to hate."

— Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time

• "Death stands behind every bride, every groom. Even as they say their vows, the flowers are rotting in her crown, his teeth are rotting in his head. Cancers they will not notice for thirty years grow slowly, already, in their stomachs. Her beauty browns at the edges as the ring slides up her finger. His strength saps, infinitesimally, as he kisses her. If you listen in the church, you can hear my clock tick softly, as they tock together toward the grave. I hold their hands as they stride proudly down the very short road to dotage and death. It’s all so sweet, it makes me cry. Let me kiss your bride on both cheeks, life. Let me feel her hot blood cool slowly against my eyelids."

— Catherynne M. Valente (Deathless)

• "As time goes on, you’ll understand. What lasts, lasts; what doesn’t, doesn’t. Time solves most things. And what time can’t solve, you have to solve yourself."

— Haruki Murakami

• ""What do you want?" I asked.

"To be with you in hell." he said." — Anna Akhmatova, from The Guest

• "I design clothes because I don’t want women to look all innocent and naïve … I want women to look stronger … I don’t like women to be taken advantage of … I don’t like men whistling at women in the street. I think they deserve more respect. I like men to keep their distance from women, I like men to be stunned by an entrance. I’ve seen a woman get nearly beaten to death by her husband. I know what misogyny is … I want people to be afraid of the women I dress."

— Alexander McQueen

• "I get out of bed, go over to the window, and look at the night sky. And think about time that can never be regained. I think of rivers, of tides. Forests and water gushing out. Rain and lightning. Rocks and shadows. All of these are in me."

— Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

• "I’d choose you. Every goddamned time."
• "When gods die, they die hard. It’s not like they fade away, or grow old, or fall asleep. They die in fire and pain, and when they come out of you, they leave your guts burned. It hurts more than anything you can talk about. And maybe worst of all is, you’re not sure if there will ever be another god to fill their place. Or if you’d ever want another god to fill their place. You don’t want fire to go out inside you twice."

— The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt

• "She had stayed a virgin so she wouldn’t be called a tramp or a slut; had married so she wouldn’t be called an old maid; faked orgasms so she wouldn’t be called frigid; had children so she wouldn’t be called barren; had not been a feminist because she didn’t want to be called queer and a man-hater; never nagged or raised her voice so she wouldn’t be called a bitch … She had done all that and yet, still, this stranger had dragged her into the gutter with the names that men call women when they are angry."

— Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

• "If you think adventure is dangerous, try routine. It is lethal."

— Paulo Coelho

• "You’re an artist … that means you see the world in ways that other people don’t. It’s your gift, to see the beauty and the horror in ordinary things."

— Cassandra Clare

• "They say every atom in our bodies was once a part of a star. Maybe I’m not leaving, maybe I’m going home."

— Vincent Freeman, Gattaca

• "When someone is crying, of course, the noble thing to do is to comfort them. But if someone is trying to hide their tears, it may also be noble to pretend you do not notice them."

— Lemony Snicket

• "I don’t want to settle. I want mindfucking love. I want to spend all night thinking about kissing you, and when I finally get the balls to, I want to go deaf to everything but that moment. I refuse to settle for anything less."
• "I have galaxies hidden between my bones and I will love you until the stars burn out."
• "We are all so broken. Pick up a person, shake them around and you’ll hear the rattling of their broken pieces. Pieces our fathers broke, or our mothers, or our friends, strangers, or our loves."

— Tarryn Fisher, Thief

• "The prince of darkness is a gentleman."

— William Shakespeare, King Lear, Act III Scene IV

• "Stop romanticizing people who hurt you."