The Poet's Notebook

"Will the computer ever replace the fetishism of the notebook? It's possible, but I doubt it. To hear the poets tell it, the small, handsome notebook and a special pen or pencil are half the work. They are an invitation to write in a certain way. They demand from us absolute conciseness, an aesthetic of modesty. If you write poems on the back of old envelopes and garage sale announcements, as I often do, you don't write epics."

Preface of The Poet's Notebook (xi, 1995)
Charles Simic

Alodus Huxley

Pragmatically [scientists] are justified in acting in this odd and extremely arbitrary way; for by concentrating exclusively on the measurable aspects of such elements of experience as can be explained in terms of a causal system they have been able to achieve a great and increasing control over the energies of nature. But power is not the same thing as insight and, as a representation of reality, the scientific picture of the world is inadequate for the simple reason that science does not even profess to deal with experiences as a whole but only with certain aspects of it in certain contexts. All this is quite clearly understood by the more philosophically minded men of science. But some scientists...tend to accept the world picture implicit in the theories of science as a complete and exhaustive account of reality; then tend to regard those aspects of experince which scientists leave out of account, because they are incompetent to deal with them, as being somehow less real than the aspects which science has arbitrarily chose to abstract from out of the infinitely rich totally of given acts.

-Adolous Huxley (1946, page 35-36 of Science Liberty and Peace)

The Lovely Bones

"There wasn't a lot of bullshit in my heaven."
-Susie Salmon [Written By: Alice Sebold)

The Missing Piece

"I can be someone's and still be my own."

-Shel Silverstein

Romeo and Juliet

Love is a smoke made with the fumes of sighs;
Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes;
Being vexed, a sea nourished with lovers' tears.
What is it else? A madness most discreet,
A choking gall and a preserving sweet.
-Romeo
[Written by: William Shakespeare]

Twilight

He hung up his gun belt and stepped out of his boots as I bustled about the kitchen. As far as I was aware, he'd never shot the gun on the job. But he kept it ready. When I came here as a child, he would always remove the bullets as soon as he walked in the door. I guess he considered me old enough now not to shoot myself by accident, and not depressed enough to shoot myself on purpose.

-Isabella Swan [Written by: Stephanie Meyer]

Hedonic Adaptation

Sex is like pizza: when it is good, it is really good, and when it is bad, it is still pretty good.

-Fredrick and Loewenstein (1999)
page 307

East of Eden

Charles felt for his brother the affection one has for helpless things, for blind puppies and new babies.

-John Steinbeck

New Moon

I squared my shoulders and walked forward to meet my fate, with my destiny solidly at my side.

-Bella Swan
[Written By: Stephanie Meyer]

Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows

Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?

-Albus Dumbledore
[Written By: J.K. Rowling]

Handbook of Child Development

Human Development - a property of systemic change in multiple and integral levels of organization comprising human life and ecology.

-Damon (1998)

The Magician's Nephew

I'm game if you are

-Polly
[Written By: C.S. Lewis]

The Paper Bag Princess

Elizabeth wanted to chase that dragon but she didn’t have any clothes. The only thing she could find that wasn’t burnt was a paper bag. She put it over her head, went off after the dragon…

-Robert Munsch

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

We all reject out of hand the idea that the love of our life may be something light or weightless; we presume our love is what must be, that without it our life would no longer be the same;

-Milan Kundera

The Hero With a Thousand Faces

The first stage of the mythological journey - which we have designated the "call to adventure" - signifies that destiny has summond the hero and transferred his spiritual center of gravity from within the pale of his society to the zone of unknown.

-Joseph Campbell