15 Quotes From Novels That Will Expand Your Way Of Thinking
By Celeste Tay
“That’s the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.”
–Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
“You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, but you do have some say in who hurts you.”
–John Green, The Fault In Our Stars
“Sometimes you make choices in life and sometimes choices make you.”
–Gayle Forman, If I Stay
“People come in and out of your life. For a time they are your world; they are everything. And then one day they’re not. There’s no telling how long you will have them near.”
–Jenny Han, P.S. I Still Love You
“Mom says each of us has a veil between ourselves and the rest of the world, like a bride wears on her wedding day, except this kind of veil is invisible. We walk around happily with these invisible veils hanging down over our faces. The world is kind of blurry, and we like it that way. But sometimes our veils are pushed away for a few moments, like there’s a wind blowing it from our faces. And when the veil lifts, we can see the world as it really is, just for those few seconds before it settles down again. We see all the beauty, and cruelty, and sadness, and love. But mostly we are happy not to. Some people learn to lift the veil themselves. Then they don’t have to depend on the wind anymore.”
–Rebecca Stead, When You Reach Me
“Paths are so much clearer when people stop looking at what everyone else is doing and instead concentrate on themselves.”
–Cecilia Ahern, The Gift
“So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they’re busy doing things they think are important. This is because they’re chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.”
–Mitch Albom, Tuesdays With Morrie
“No single imagination is wild or crass or cheesy enough to compete with the collective mindlessness that propels our fascination forward.”
–Karen Tei Yamashita, Tropic Of Orange
“I think one of our cardinal f***ups is how we insist that even vicious whimsical crazy shit needs to make sense, add up, belong to a reason. We lay this pain on ourselves–there must be a reason behind this horror, there must, but I ain’t adequate to findin’ it, and that’s my fault, so torture me some more.”
–Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red
“The Buddha said that suffering was caused by desire, we’d learned, and that the cessation of desire meant the cessation of suffering. When you stopped wishing things wouldn’t fall apart, you’d stop suffering when they did.”
–John Green, Looking For Alaska
“The life where nothing was ever unexpected. Or inconvenient. Or unusual. The life without colour, pain, or past.”
–Lois Lowry, The Giver
“There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense.”
–Jane Austen, Pride And Prejudice
“The right thing isn’t always real obvious. Sometimes the right thing for one person is the wrong thing for someone else.”
–Stephanie Meyer, Twilight
“Kind people have a way of working their way inside me and rooting there.”
–Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games
“Sometimes I think we need to tell our stories more than anyone needs to hear our stories. Maybe just so that anticipation or happiness can be reached for again. But other times it is almost as if the story itself wants repeating. So that the strand of hair caught in a kiss or the turn of a beautiful face isn’t lost forever. So that, especially when it comes to beauty, we’re not alone and left with the burden of remembering.”
–Victoria Redel, The Border Of Truth