“My love for her was close to piety. You may think it strange that I should use this word, with its religious connotation, to describe my feeling towards a woman. But even now I believeand I believe...”

“I am an inconsistent creature. Perhaps it is the pressure of my past, and not my own perverse mind, that has made me into this contradictory being. I am all too well aware of this fault in myself. ...”

“But once I could look back on it in a calmer frame of mind, it struck me that his motive was surely not so simple and straightforward. Had it resulted from a fatal collision between reality and ide...”

“But do you imagine theres a certain type of person in the world who conforms to the idea of a bad person'? Youll never find someone who fits that mold neatly, you know. On the whole, all people are...”

“I am a lonely man," he said again that evening. "And is it not possible that you are also a lonely person? But I am an older man, and I can live with my loneliness, quietly. You are young, and it m...”

“The memory of having sat at someones feet will later make you want to trample him underfoot. Im trying to fend off your admiration for me, you see, in order to save myself from your future contempt...”

“Some experiences are universal. A girl is a girl whether she lives in West Omaha or Sweet Valley. Books are often far more than books.”

“A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.”

“The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,And all the sweet serenity of books”

“We kill all the caterpillars, then complain there are no butterflies.”

“Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace.”

“You can be used by someone for their aims when you are not aware of your true being”

“Just because it's fiction doesn't mean it's any less true.”

“Oh, Sweetie. No one ever gets through their TBR list. For every book you finish, you'll add five more. That's just the way it works.”

“If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”