Nobody wants to hear that you will try your best. It is the wrong thing to say. It is like saying, "I probably won't hit you with a shovel."

- from "When Did You See Her Last?" by Lemony Snicket

To me, when someone wrongs you, you both share the burden of that wrongdoing--the pain of it weighs on both of you. Forgiveness, then, means choosing to bear the full weight all by yourself.

- from Allegiant by Veronica Roth

What these novels offer that life does not offer is the opposite of a recreational spirit. It is seriousness. They posit effort and perseverance not only as necessary to salvation but as salvation itself. It is when your own life doesn't require of you the effort, concentration, and intensity of aim that L'Amour's heroes need to stay alive that you want to be out with them in a Wyoming blizzard with a murderer on your tail fifty miles from Hat Creek Station.

- from West of Everything by Jane Tompkins

"Fighting is better than this waiting," Brienne said. "You don't feel so helpless when you fight. You have a sword and a horse, sometimes an axe. When you're armored it's hard for anyone to hurt you."
- from A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin

"It opens a whole can of worms when you go around making contact with people."
- from The Canning Season by Polly Horvath

Sincere--that was the hell of it. From a distance, one's adversaries seemed fiends, but with a closer view, one saw the sincerity and it was as great as one's own. Perhaps Satan was the sincerest of the lot.
- from A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

Speak up, destiny, speak up! Destiny always seems decades away, but suddenly it's not decades away; it's right now. But maybe destiny is always right now, right here, right this very instant, maybe.
- from A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.