“History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves”
― Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

“Understanding requires insight. Insight must be anchored.”
― Brian Greene, The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality

“But, as Einstein once said, “For we convinced physicists, the distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion, however persistent.
― Brian Greene, The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality

“It is always fatal to have music or poetry interrupted.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch

“We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, "Oh, nothing!" Pride helps; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our hurts— not to hurt others.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch

“But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch

“I need you, the reader, to imagine us, for we don't really exist if you don't.”
― Nabokov Vladimi, Lolita

“Words without experience are meaningless.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

For the two of us, home isn't a place. It is a person. And we are finally home.
Stephanie Perkins, Anna and the French Kiss (Anna and the French Kiss)

I know you aren't perfect. But it's a person's imperfections that make them perfect for someone else.
Stephanie Perkins, Lola and the Boy Next Door

I wish friends held hands more often, like the children I see on the streets sometimes. I'm not sure why we have to grow up and get embarrassed about it.
Stephanie Perkins, Anna and the French Kiss

Why is it that the right people never wind up together? Why are people so afraid to leave a relationship, even if they know it's a bad one?
Stephanie Perkins, Anna and the French Kiss

Letting go doesn't mean that you don't care about someone anymore. It's just realizing that the only person you really have control over is yourself.
Deborah Reber, Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul

We are all going, I thought, and it applies to turtles and turtlenecks, Alaska the girl and Alaska the place, because nothing can last, not even the earth itself. 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

I have never found anybody who could stand to accept the daily demonstrative love I feel in me, and give back as good as I give.
Sylvia Plath, The Journals of Sylvia Plath

The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.
Maya Angelou, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes