The Dragon Reborn by Robert Jordan

"Just because fate has chosen something for you instead of you choosing it for yourself doesn't mean it has to be bad. Even if it's something you are sure you would never have chosen in a hundred years. "Better ten days of love than years of regretting,' " she quoted. page 26


"...Rumor takes wing along a hundred paths. Always plan for the worst, child; that way, all your surprises will be pleasant ones." page 104


     "Most of those we call heroes only did what they had to do. ...." page 184


"... For the young, death is an enemy they wish to try their strength against. For those of us a little older, she is an old lover, but one we are not eager to meet again soon." page 383


"... Any fool knows men and women think differently at times, but the biggest difference is this. Men forget, but never forgive: women forgive, but never forget. ..." page 466

The Great Hunt by Robert Jordan

There is one rule, above all others, for being a man. Whatever comes, face it on your feet. p.119


     "... The best of men are not much better than housebroken." Nynaeve paused, and added half to herself, "But then, the best of them are worth the trouble of housebreaking." p. 139


     "Some men," she said, not raising her eyes from his hand, "choose to seek greatness, while others are forced to it. It is always better to choose than to be forced. A man who's forced is never completely his own master. He must dance on the strings of those who forced him." p. 256


Lan said the time to sound most sure was when you  were least certain. p. 298


Women often seemed to leave things unsaid, and in his limited experience it was what they did not say that proved the most trouble. p. 298


"Does it surprise you that your life might go differently if you made different choices, or different things happened to you?...." p.533 

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

When I had finished, his face changed into a "serious talk" face.
     "Do you always think this much, Charlie?"
     "Is that bad?" I just wanted someone to tell me the truth.
     "Not necessarily. It's just that sometimes people use thought to not participate in life." p. 24


     "Charlie, we accept the love we think we deserve." p. 24


...Then, Patrick pointed at me, and said something to Bob.
     "He's something, isn't he?"
     Bob nodded his head. Patrick then said something I don't think I'll ever forget.
     "He's a wallflower."
     And Bob really nodded his head. And the whole room nodded their head. And I started to feel nervous in the Bob way, but Patrick didn't let me get too nervous. He sat down next to me.
     "You see things. You keep quiet about them. And you understand."
     I didn't know that other people thought things about me. I didn't know they looked. I was sitting on the floor of a basement of my first real party between Sam and Patrick, and I remembered that Sam introduced me as her friend to Bob. And I remembered that Patrick had done the same for Brad. And I started to cry. p.37-38


     Sam looked at me soft. And she hugged me. And I closed my eyes because I wanted to know nothing but her arms. And she kissed my cheek and whispered so nobody could hear.
     "I love you."
     I knew she meant it in a friend way, but I didn't care because it was the third time since my Aunt Helen died that I heard it from anyone. The other two times were from my mom.
     After that, I couldn't believe that Sam actually got me a present because I thought that the "I love you" was it. But she did get me a present. And for the first time, something nice like that made me smile and not cry. ... She took me to her room and stood me in front of her dresser, which was covered in a pillowcase with pretty colors. She lifted off the pillowcase, and there I was, standing in my old suit, looking at an old typewriter with a fresh ribbon. Inside the typewriter was a piece of white paper.
     On that piece of white paper, Sam wrote, "Write about me sometime." And I typed something back to her, standing right there in her bedroom. I just typed.
     "I will."
     And I felt good that those were the first two words that I ever typed on my new old typewriter that Sam gave me. We just sat there quiet for a moment, and she smiled. And I moved to the typewriter again, and I wrote something.
     "I love you, too."
     And Sam looked at the paper, and she looked at me.
     "Charlie...have you ever kissed a girl?"
     I shook my head no. It was so quiet.
     "Not even when you were little?"
     I shook my head no again. And she looked very sad.
     She told me about the first time she was kissed. She told me that it was with one of her dad's friends. She was seven. And she told nobody about it except for Mary Elizabeth and then Patrick a year ago. And she started to cry. And she said something that I won't ever forget. Ever.
     "I know that you know that I like Craig. And I know that I told you not to think of me that way. And I know that we can't be together like that. But I want you to forget all those things for a minute. Okay?"
     "Okay."
     "I want to make sure that the first person you kiss loves you. Okay?"
     "Okay." She was crying harder now. And I was, too, because when I hear something like that I just can't help it.
     "I just want to make sure of that. Okay?"
     "Okay."
     And she kissed me. It was that kind of kiss that I could never tell my friends about out loud. It was the kind of kiss that made me know that I was never so happy in my whole life. p. 69-70


I don't know how much longer I can keep going without a friend. I used to be able to do it very easily, but that was before I knew what having a friend was like. It's much easier not to know things sometimes. p. 144


... because things change. And friends leave. And life doesn't stop for anybody. p.145


I think the idea is that every person has to live for his or her own life and then make the choice to share it with other people. Maybe that is what makes people "participate." p.169


All I cared about was the fact that Sam got really hurt. and I guess I realized at that moment that I really did love her. Because there was nothing to gain, and that didn't matter. p.179


     And that was that. Bill didn't try to make sure that I would see him next year if I needed anything. He didn't ask me why I was crying. He just let me hear what he had to say in my own way and let things be. That was probably the best part. p 182


     When I was driving home, I just thought about the word "special." And I thought that the last person who said that about me was my aunt Helen. I was very grateful to have heard it again. Because I guess we all forget sometimes. And I think everyone is special in their own way. I really do. p. 182


I love my mom so much. I don't care if that's corny to say. I think on my next birthday, I'm going to buy her a present. I think that should be the tradition. The kid gets gifts from everybody, and he buys one present for his mom since she was there, too. I think that would be nice. p.189


It's strange the times people choose to be generous. p. 196


     "Charlie, I told you not to think of me that way nine months ago because of what I'm saying now. .... Not because I didn't think you were great. It's just that I don't want to be somebody's crush. If somebody likes me, I want them to like the real me, not what they think I am. And I don't want them to carry it around inside. I want them to show me, so I can feel it, too. I want them to be able to do whatever they want around me. And if they do something I don't like, I'll tell them." p.201


So, I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even if we don't have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there. We can still do things. And we can try to feel okay about them. p.211


Maybe it's good to put things in perspective, but sometimes, I think that the only perspective is to really be there. Like Sam said. Because it's okay to feel things. And be who you are about them.
p. 212

Chesapeake Blue by Nora Roberts

It was strange how grief could hide inside you. Like a virus, lying low for months, even years, only to spring out and leave you weak and helpless again. p. 131


"...they turned their world around for me, and because of it, turned mine around with it. ...They made a home for me, and nothing that happened before matters nearly as much as everything that came after." p. 156


Intimacy, she'd always believed, took courage as well as desire. p. 214


"... Time just goes by, no matter what the hell you do. Some things you let go. Some things are worth repeating." p. 346

The Eye of the World: Book One by Robert Jordan

Sometimes you have to take a chance, even if it's a poor one. page 109


Anything can be a weapon, if the man or woman who holds it has the nerve and will to make it so. page 144


There must be a difference in what you saw, it seemed to him, depending on whether you sought adventure or had it forced on you. page 163


Take life as it comes. Run when you have to, fight when you must, rest when you can. page 380


"Ila was giving me advice on being a woman," Egwene  replied absently. ......
    " Advice! Nobody tells us how to be men. We just are."
    "That, " Egwenesaid, "is probably why you make such a bad job of it." page 388


It was easier to be brave, he discovered, when someone needed your protection. page 630


"Peace favor your sword." ....
     "What a strange thing to say," Egwene said. "Why do they use it like that? Peace."
     "When you have never known a thing except to dream," Lan replied, heeling Mandarb forward, "it becomes more that a talisman." page 665

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

"That's the trouble with living things. Don't last very long. Kittens one day, old cats the next. And then just memories fade and blend and smudge together..." .Page 61


I went away in my head, to a book. That was where I went whenever real life was too hard or too inflexible.  Page 80


     I felt safe. It was as if the essence of grandmotherliness had been condensed into that one place, that one time.  Page 127


"Nobody actually looks like what they really are on the inside. You don't. I don't. People are much more complicated than that. It's true of everybody." ...
"Monsters come in all shapes and sizes. Some of them are things people are scared of. Some of them are things that look like things people used to be scared of a long time ago. Sometimes monsters are things people should be scared of, but they aren't." ....
"Oh, monsters are scared," said Lettie. "That's why they're monsters. And as for grown-ups..." She stopped talking, rubbed her freckled nose with a finger. Then, "I'm going to tell you something important. Grown-ups don't look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they're big and thoughtless and they always know what they are doing. Inside, they look just like they always have. Like they did when they were your age. The truth is, there aren't any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world." ...
I though about adults. I wondered if that was true: if they were all really children wrapped in adult bodies, like children's books hidden in the middle of dull, long adult books, the kind with no pictures or conversations. Page 154-155


     Children, as I have said, use back ways and hidden paths, while adults take roads and official paths. Page 156


Peas baffled me. I could not understand why grown-ups would take things that tasted so good when they were freshly-picked and raw, and put them in tin cans, and make them revolting. Page 157


Adults should not weep, I knew. They did not have mothers who would comfort them. Page 170


 ...It won't hurt."
     I stared at him. Adults only ever said that when it, whatever it happened to be, was going to hurt so much. Page 183


"But you stayed where you were meant to be, and you didn't listen to them. Well done. That's quality, that is." And she sounded proud. In that moment I forgot my hunger and I forgot my fear. Page 196
 
     I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled. I could not control the world I was in, could not walk away from things or people or moments that hurt, but I found joy in the things that made me happy. Page 206


     I was a normal child. Which is to say, I was selfish and I was not entirely convinced of the existence of things that were not me, and I was certain, rock-solid unshakably certain, that I was the most important thing in creation. There was nothing that was more important to me than I was.
     Even so, I understood what I was seeing. the hunger birds would-no, they were-ripping the world away, tearing it into nothing. Soon enough, there would be no world. My mother, my father, my sister, my house, my school friends, my town, my grandparents, London, the Natural History Museum, France, television, books ancient Egypt-because of me, all these things would be gone, and there would be nothing in their place.
     ....
     I did not want to die at all. Understand that.
     But I could not let everything be destroyed, when I had it in my power to stop the destruction. Page 216


I knew there was no going back, that there was no way that this could end in anything but pain, and I knew that I was willing to exchange my life for the world. Page 217


"Nothing's ever the same," she said. "Be it a second later or a hundred years. It's always churning and roiling. And people change as much as oceans." Page 227


"You get on with your own life. Lettie gave it to you. You just have to grow up and try and be worth it."..... It's hard enough being alive, trying to survive in the world and find your place in it, to do the things you need to do to get by, without wondering if the thing you just did, whatever it was, was worth someone having...if not died, then having given up her life. Page 231


     A story only matters, I suspect, to the extent that the people in the story change. But I was seven when all of these things happened, and I was the same person at the end of it that I was at the beginning, wasn't I? So was everyone else. They must have been. People don't change. Page 235


"You don't pass or fail at being a person, dear." Page 241


"Words save our lives, sometimes." Neil Gaiman's Acknowledgments for The Ocean at the End of the Lane








    

River's Bend by JoAnn Ross

...fairy tales demonstrate compassion, intelligence, courage, coping skills and determination. p.221