I have always been a huge bookworm my entire life. For as long as I can remember, I have loved to read. As I've gotten older my tastes have refined a bit, and my literary preferences have widened. Over the last 20 years give or take, I have found a few books that are all my "absolute favorite." For those of you that do not enjoy reading as much as I do, here are a few of the best lines from some of my favorite books.

On Life...

"The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places." - Ernest Hemingway

"I cannot express it: but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is, or should be, an existence of yours beyond you." - Emily Brontë, "Wuthering Heights"

“We look up at the same stars, and see such different things.” - George R.R. Martin, "A Storm of Swords"

“It sounds plausible enough tonight, but wait until tomorrow. Wait for the common sense of the morning.” - H.G. Wells, "The Time Machine"

"Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart." - Haruki Murakami, "Kafka on the Shore"

On Love...

“That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can.” - J.D. Salinger, "The Catcher in the Rye"

“She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.” - J.D. Salinger

"Whatever our souls are made of, him and mine are the same." - Emily Brontë, "Wuthering Heights"

"You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you." - Jane Austen, "Persuasion"

"I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self respect. And it’s these things I’d believe in, even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn’t all she should be. I love her and it is the beginning of everything."- F. Scott Fitzgerald, "Letters to Zelda Fitzgerald"

On Loss...

“I didn't want to kiss you goodbye — that was the trouble — I wanted to kiss you good night — and there's a lot of difference.” - Ernest Hemingway

"The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again." - Charles Dickens

“All grown-ups were once children…but only few of them remember it.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, "The Little Prince"

“I wish I knew how to quit you.” - Anne Proulx, "Brokeback Mountain"

"He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest." - W.H. Auden, "Stop All the Clocks"