It's why we broke up, a small thing that's disappeared or maybe was never really in my hands in the first place.
—Daniel Handler in Why We Broke Up
It's funny—when people call you "shy," they usually smile. Like it's cute, some funny little habit you'll grow out of when you're older, like the gaps in your grin when your baby teeth fall out. If they knew how it felt—really being shy, not just unsure at first—they wouldn't smile. Not if they knew how the feeling knots up your stomach or makes your palms sweat or robs you of the ability to say anything that makes sense. It's not cute at all.
—Claudia Gray in Evernight
I don't hate you. I don't think I ever really did. It was just anger. And once I faced it head-on, once I understood it, it dissipated.
—Gayle Forman in Where She Went
This sadness is one of the great trials of the human experiment. As far as we know, we are the only species on the planet who have been given the gift—or curse, perhaps—of awareness about our own mortality. Everything here eventually dies; we're just the lucky ones who get to think about this fact every day.
—Elizabeth Gilbert in Love
Why does he have to be my boyfriend? Are you inferior if you don't have a boyfriend? Why does everybody have to be in love with somebody?
—Ann Brashares in Girls In Pants
And I knew I would remember this night, in the same misty way I'd remembered all the good things, as a time when things were as perfect as they could be.
—Sarah Dessen in That Summer
It's the most awful feeling in the world to love someone who can't love you back.
—Marie Coulson in Bound Together
Maybe if I didn't say anything about what happened, we could get back to the way we were. Ignoring a problem was a perfectly acceptable way to deal with it, as long as both people agree never to bring it up again.
—Kim Harrison in and the Undead
I learned a while ago that the best way to get people to like you is not to like them too much.
—John Green in An Abundance of Katherines
Oh, I don't blame Congress. If I had $600 billion at my disposal, I'd be irresponsible, too.
—Lichty and Wagner
If you look good and dress well, you don't need a purpose in life.
—Robert Pante
A bore is a man who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.
—Gian Vincenzo Gravina
Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people.
—W. C. Fields
A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water.
—Carl Reiner
It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.
—Edmund Burke