I feel like there's something terrible and wonderful and amazing that's just beyond my grasp. I have dreams about it. I do dream, by the way. It hovers over me at odd moments. And then it's gone. I feel like I'm always on the brink of something that never arrives. I want to either have it or be free of it.
---Michael Cunningham, Specimen Days

She was glad that the cozy house, and Pa and Ma and the firelight and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.
--Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House In The Big Woods

Love is never any better than the lover. 
--Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

I am not a smart man, particularly, but one day, at long last, I stumbled from the dark woods of my own, and my family's, and my country's past, holding in my hands these truths: that love grows from the rich loam of forgiveness; that mongrels make good dogs; that the evidence of God exists in the roundness of things. This much, at least, I've figured out. I know this much is true.
--Wally Lamb, I Know This Much Is True

You have my whole heart. You always did.
--Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind. 
Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky 
And the affrighted steed ran on alone, 
Do not weep. 
War is kind. 

Hoarse, booming drums of the regiment, 
Little souls who thirst for fight, 
These men were born to drill and die. 
The unexplained glory flies above them, 
Great is the battle-god, great, and his kingdom -- 
A field where a thousand corpses lie. 

Do not weep, babe, for war is kind. 
Because your father tumbled in the yellow trenches, 
Raged at his breast, gulped and died, 
Do not weep. 
War is kind. 

Swift blazing flag of the regiment, 
Eagle with crest of red and gold, 
These men were born to drill and die. 
Point for them the virtue of slaughter, 
Make plain to them the excellence of killing 
And a field where a thousand corpses lie. 

Mother whose heart hung humble as a button 
On the bright splendid shroud of your son, 
Do not weep. 
War is kind. 

--Stephen Crane

It was wrong to do this,' said the angel. 
'You should live like a flower, 
Holding malice like a puppy, 
Waging war like a lambkin.' 

'Not so,' quoth the man 
Who had no fear of spirits; 
'It is only wrong for angels 
Who can live like the flowers, 
Holding malice like the puppies, 
Waging war like the lambkins.'
--Stephen Crane

There were so many different ways to be beautiful.
--Michael Cunningham, A Home At The End Of The World

It’s more that I’m afraid of time. And not having enough of it. Time to figure out who I’m supposed to be… to find my place in the world before I have to leave it. I’m afraid of what I’ll miss.
--Ann Brashares, The Sisterhood Of The Traveling Pants

Life plays the same lovely and agonizing joke on all of us.
--F.Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful And The Damned

We stand there, quiet. My questions all seem wrong: How did you get so old? Was it all at once, in a day, or did you peter out bit by bit? When did you stop having parties? Did everyone else get old too, or was it just you? Are other people still here, hiding in the palm trees or holding their breath underwater? When did you last swim your laps? Do your bones hurt? Did you know this was coming and hide that you knew, or did it ambush you from behind?
--Jennifer Egan, A Visit From The Goon Squad

The smell of peace is abroad, the air is cold, the skies are brittle, and the leaves have finally fallen. I wear a pony coat with skin like watered silk and muff of lamb. My fingers lie in depths of warmth. I have a jacket of silver sequins and heavy bracelets of rich corals. I wear about my neck a triple thread-like chain of lapis lazulis and pearls. On my face is softness and content like a veil of golden moonlight. And I have never in all my lives been so lonely.
--Erik Larson, In The Garden Of Beasts: Love Terror, And An American Family In Hitler's Berlin

Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.
--Rainer Maria Rilke

I met a reverend mother once who cried...'ah, it's all so sad' 
- 'What did she cry about?' 
- 'I don't know, after talking to me, I remember I said some silly thing like "the universe is a woman because it's round" but I think she cried because she was remembering her early days when she had a romance with some soldier who died, at least that's what they say, she was the greatest woman I ever saw, big blue eyes, big smart woman ... you could do that, get out of this awful mess and leave it all behind.
--Jack Kerouac, Big Sur

When the suicide arrived at the sky, the people there asked him: "Why?" He replied: "Because no one admired me."
--Stephen Crane, Complete Poems Of Stephen Crane

So everything is necessary. Every least thing. This is the hard lesson. Nothing can be dispensed with. Nothing despised. Because the seams are hid from us, you see. The joinery. The way in which the world is made. We have no way to know what could be taken away. What omitted. We have no way to tell what might stand and what might fall.
--Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing

The men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you.
--James Joyce, Dubliners

When we did not move or speak, there was no proof that we were there at all.
--Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping

DON'T THINK OF IT AS DYING, said Death. JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH.
--Terri Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice And Accurate Prophecies Of Agnes Nutter, Witch

All I think of ever is that I love you.
--F.Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful And The Damned

The groove is so mysterious. We're born with it and we lose it and the world seems to split apart before our eyes into stupid and cool. When we get it back, the world unifies around us, and both stupid and cool fall away.
I am grateful to those who are keepers of the groove. The babies and the grandmas who hang on to it and help us remember when we forget that any kind of dancing is better than no dancing at all.
--Lynda Barry, One Hundred Demons

So it came to pass that as he trudged from the place of blood and wrath his soul changed.
--Stephen Crane, The Red Badge Of Courage

All I ever wanted was a world without maps.
--Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

He will talk to me a little while, too shy to tell me why he has come, and then he will thank me and leave, walking backward a few steps, thinking, Yes, the barn is still there, yes, the lilacs, even the pot of petunias. This was my father's house. And I will think, He is young. He cannot know that my whole life has come down to this moment.
That he has answered his father's prayers.
--Marilynne Robinson, Home

        He woke with a start. It was cold, but not so cold. He had never slept before on these vigils, but he was old, not quite finished, but nearly finished. He thought of all those that were suffering, of Gertrude the weak and foolish one, of the people of Shanty Town and Alexandra, of his wife now at this moment. But above all of his son, Absalom. Would he be awake, would he be able to sleep, this night before the morning? He cried out, My son, my son, my son.
        With his crying he was now fully awake, and he looked at his watch and saw that it was one o'clock. The sun would rise soon after five, and it was then it was done, they said. If the boy was asleep, then let him sleep, it was better. But if he was awake, then oh Christ of the abundant mercy, be with him.  Over this he prayed long and earnestly.
        Would his wife be awake, and thinking of it? She would have come with him, were it not for the girl. And the girl, why, he had forgotten her. But she was no doubt asleep; she was loving enough, but this husband had given her so little, no more than her others had done.
        And there was Jarvis, bereaved of his wife and his son, and his daughter-in-law bereaved of her husband, and her children bereaved of their father, especially the small boy, the bright laughing boy. The small boy stood there before his eyes, and he said to Kumalo, When I go, something bright will go out of Ndotsheni. Yes, I see, he said. Yes, I see. He was not shy or ashamed, but he said, Yes, I see, and laughed with his pleasure.
        And now for all the people of Africa, the beloved country. Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika, God save Africa. But he would not see that salvation. It lay afar off, because men were afraid of it. Because, to tell the truth, they were afraid of him, and his wife, and Msimangu, and the young demonstrator. And what was there evil in their desires, in their hunger? That men should walk upright in the land where they were born, and be free to use the fruits of the earth, what was there evil in it? Yet men were afraid, with a fear that was deep, deep in the heart, a fear so deep that they hid their kindness, or brought it out with fierceness and anger, and hid it behind fierce and frowning eyes. They were afraid because they were so few. And such fear could not be cast out, but by love.
        It was Msimangu who had said, Msimangu who had no hate for any man, I have one great fear in my heart, that one day when they turn to loving they will find we are turned to hating.
        Oh, the grave and the somber words.
--Alan Paton, Cry, The Beloved Country

Mind is the Maker, for no reason at all, for all this creation, created to fall.
--Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

The good thing about being old, is you don’t have to worry about dying young.
--Stephen King, Doctor Sleep

But he said, in substance, to himself that if the earth and moon were about to clash, many persons would doubtless plan to get upon the roofs to witness the collision.
--Stephen Crane, The Red Badge Of Courage

She conceived of life as a road down which one traveled, an easy enough road through a broad country, and that one's destination was there from the very beginning, a measured distance away, standing in the ordinary light like some plain house where one went in and was greeted by respectable people and was shown to a room where everything one had ever lost or put aside was gathered together, waiting.
--Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping

It is just an illusion here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone, it is gone forever.
--Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five