Every time you do a good deed you shine the light a little farther into the dark. And the thing is, when you're gone that light is going to keep shining on, pushing the shadows back. - Charles de Lint

It is a small world. You do not have to live in it particularly long to learn that for yourself. There is a theory that, in the whole world, there are only five hundred real people (the cast, as it were; all the rest of the people in the world, the theory suggests, are extras) and what is more, they all know each other. And it's true, or true as far as it goes. In reality the world is made of thousands upon thousands of groups of about five hundred people, all of whom will spend their lives bumping into each other, trying to avoid each other, and discovering each other in the same unlikely teashop in Vancouver. There is an unavoidability to this process. It's not even coincidence. It's just the way the world works, with no regard for individuals or for propriety. - Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root. - Henry David Thoreau, Walden, or Life in the Woods

Ambulances were cool. “You just want to fondle my extraneous body parts,” I said to the EMT as I picked up a silver gadget that looked disturbingly like an alien orifice probe, broke it, then promptly put it back, hoping it wouldn’t leave someone’s life hanging in the balance because the EMT couldn’t alien-probe his orifices. - Darynda Jones, First Grave on the Right

We all have an old knot in the heart we wish to untie. - Michael Ondaatje, The Cat's Table

If people refuse to look at you in a new light and they can only see you for what you were, only see you for the mistakes you've made, if they don't realize that you are not your mistakes, then they have to go. - Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

Would you mind repeating that? I'm afraid I might have lost my wits altogether and just hallucinated what I've longed to hear. - Jeaniene Frost, Halfway to the Grave

Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. - Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

Your salary is not love and your word is not love. Your clothes are not love and holding hands is not love. Sex is not love and a kiss is not love. Long letters are not love and a text is not love. Flowers are not love and a box of chocolates is not love. Sunsets are not love and photographs are not love. The stars are not love and a beach under the moonlight is not love. The smell of someone else on your pillow is not love and the feeling of their skin touching your skin is not love. Heart-shaped candy is not love and an overseas holiday is not love. The truth is not love and winning an argument is not love. Warm coffee isn't love and cheap cards bought from stores are not love. Tears are not love and laughter is not love. A head on a shoulder is not love and messages written at the front of books given as gifts are not love. Apathy is not love and numbness is not love. A pain in your chest is not love and clenching your fist is not love. Rain is not love.Only you. Only you, are love. - pleasefindthis, I Wrote This For You

A tiger only needs three things to be comfortable. Lots of food, sleep, and…actually, no it’s just those two things. - Colleen Houck

Let whoever can do so deceive me, he will never bring it about that I am nothing, so long as I continue to think I am something. - René Descartes

Kools and Newports were for black people and lower-class whites. Camels were for procrastinators, those who wrote bad poetry, and those who put off writing bad poetry. Merits were for sex addicts, Salems were for alcoholics, and Mores were for people who considered themselves to be outrageous but really weren't. - David Sedaris, When You Are Engulfed in Flames

We all know interspecies romance is weird. - Tim Burton

Toby Zeigler: There's literally no one in the world I don't hate right now. - Aaron Sorkin

The secret to humor is surprise. - Aristotle

Breathe. Let go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure. - Oprah Winfrey

Do you remember what you said to me once? That you could help me only by loving me? Well-you did love me for a moment and it helped me. It has always helped me. - Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth

A half-read book is a half-finished love affair. - David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

The fact that a cloud from a minor volcanic eruption in Iceland—a small disturbance in the complex mechanism of life on the Earth—can bring to a standstill the aerial traffic over an entire continent is a reminder of how, with all its power to transform nature, humankind remains just another species on the planet Earth. - Slavoj Žižek

If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. - John Stuart Mill, On Liberty