I haven't been able to put a book down since before I can remember. I have always been drawn to the fascinating idea that every book is created by a different variation of just twenty six letters. An enticing page-turner is a wonderful thing, but the greatest authors can create sentences that leave you in awe, sometimes so prevailing that you have to put the book down and walk away for a moment.

Here are 21 of my favorite sentences from some of my favorite books:

"The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven." John Milton, Paradise Lost

"Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same." Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

“What if we could stop being different colors, different backgrounds, and just be in love?” E. Lockhart, We Were Liars

"We accept the love we think we deserve." Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being A Wallflower

"If being in love means thinking about something every second of every day...if being in love means your entire mood shifts when they're around...if being in love means you'd do anything and everything for them...then I am hopelessly in love with you." Estelle Maskame, Did I Mention I Love You

"Sometimes I can feel my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living." Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

"And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good." John Steinbeck, East of Eden

"The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance." Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

"Kind people have a way of working their way inside me and rooting there." Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games

“You should be kissed and often, and by someone who knows how.” Margaret Mitchell, Gone With The Wind

"Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat." Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

"My thoughts are stars I can't fathom into constellations." John Green, The Fault in our Stars

"Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, only if one remembers to turn on the light." J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

"It's a lot easier to be lost than found; it's the reason we're always searching and never really discovered–too many locks, not enough keys." Sarah Dessen, Lock and Key

"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view–until you climb into his skin and walk around in it." Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“If only she could be so oblivious again, to feel such love without knowing it, mistaking it for laughter. ” Mark Zusak, The Book Thief“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

"She was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world.” Kate Chopin, The Awakening

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

"We cross our bridges as we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and the presumption that once our eyes watered." Tom Stoppard, Rosencratz and Guildenstern Are Dead

"One must be careful of books, and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us." Cassandra Clare, The Infernal Devices