A Tale of Two Cities

• "It was one of those dark nights that hold their breath by the hour together, and then heave a long low sigh, and then hold their breath again."
• "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."

Call Me By Your Name

• "No, she would say, this one is too young still, youth has no shame, shame comes with age."
• "And yet, he had shown me that what I wanted could be given and taken so naturally that one wonders why it needed such hand-wringing torment and shame."
• "Oliver liked to keep the windows and shutters wide open in the afternoon, with just the swelling sheer curtains between us and life beyond, because it was a 'crime' to block away so much sunlight and keep such a landscape from view, especially when you didn't have it all life long, he said."
• "Time makes us sentimental. Perhaps, in the end, it is because of time that we suffer."

Cat's Cradle

• "They were lovebirds. They entertained each other endlessly with little gifts: sights worth seeing out the plane window, amusing or instructive bits from things they read, random recollections of times gone by."

Life of Pi

• "Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can."
• "To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation."
• "For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out."

Nana

• "What an effect she created with that splendid figure of hers in the crystal grotto! She didn't say a word: it was more impressive that way, and she took the audience's breath away by simply showing herself... Around her the grotto, all made of glass, was as bright as day. Cascades of diamonds flowed down; strings of white pearls streamed along the stalactites hanging from the ceiling; and amid the transparent atmosphere and flowing spring-water, which was crossed by a broad ray of electric light, she shone like a sun with that rosy skin and fiery hair of hers. Paris would always see her like that, shining high up in the midst of all that glittering crystal, like the Blessed Sacrament."

Night and Day

• "She was some twenty-five years of age, but looked older because she earned, or intended to earn, her own living, and had already lost the look of the irresponsible spectator, and taken on that of the private in the army of workers. Her gestures seemed to have a certain purpose; the muscles round eyes and lips were set rather firmly, as though the senses had undergone some discipline, and were held ready for a call on them. She had contracted two faint lines between her eyebrows, not from anxiety but from thought, and it was quite evident that all the feminine instincts of pleasing, soothing, and charming were crossed by others in no way peculiar to her sex."
• "But a second of introspection had the alarming result of showing him that his mind, when looked at from within, was no longer familiar ground. He felt, that is to say, what he had never consciously felt before; he was revealed to himself as other than he was wont to think him; he was afloat upon a sea of unknown and tumultuous possibilities."
• "It was life, it was death. The great sea was round us. It was the voyage for ever and ever."

The Age of Innocence

• "Does no one want to know the truth here, Mr. Archer? The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!"

The House on Mango Street

• "Sally, do you sometimes wish you didn't have to go home? Do you wish your feet would one day keep walking and take you far away from Mango Street, far away and maybe your feet would stop in front of a house, a nice one with flowers and big windows and steps for you to climb up two by two upstairs to where a room is waiting for you. And if you opened the little window latch and gave it a shove, the windows would swing open, all the sky would come in. There'd be no nosy neighbors watching, no motorcycles and cars, no sheets and towels and laundry. Only trees and more trees and plenty of blue sky. And you could laugh, Sally. You could go to sleep and wake up and never have to think who likes and doesn't like you. You could close your eyes and you wouldn't have to worry what people said because you never belonged here anyway and nobody could make you sad and nobody would think you're strange because you like to dream and dream. And on one could yell at you if they saw you out in the dark leaning against a car, leaning against somebody without someone thinking you are bad, without somebody saying it is wrong, without the whole world waiting for you to make a mistake when all you wanted, all you wanted, Sally, was to love and to love and to love and to love, and no one could call that crazy."

The Secret Life of Salvador Dali

• "The danger is past for today."
• "I adored to lose myself in the labyrinth of reasonings which resounded in the forming crystals of my young intelligence like authentic celestial music."

The Virgin Suicides

• "What my yia yia could never understand about America was why everyone pretended to be happy all the time."