Have you ever been completely indulged in a book? I mean completely– with each turning page and passing word? It's arguably one of the best feelings: being all-consumed by a great read. It's just something about stumbling upon those words that have the ability to stick with you forever.
If you're anything like me, each book lining the shelves of your room is filled with yellow highlighter, pen marks, and doodled hearts around your favorite lines. Although page-turners are satisfying, it's the words that you stumble upon that are so powerful that you have to set the book down. Something so powerful that it forces you to step back and let the words you read resonate inside of you.
So, even though it was hard to narrow it down to just a few, here are 20 of my favorite literature quotes.
"It seemed funny to me that the sunset she saw from her patio and the one I saw from the back steps was the same one. Maybe the two different worlds we lived in weren't so different. We saw the same sunset." S.E Hinton, The Outsiders
"At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great." Willa Cather, My Antonia
"I don't know where over there is, but I know it's somewhere and I hope it's beautiful." John Green, Looking for Alaska
"I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart; I am, I am, I am." Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
"I can't explain what I mean, and even if I could, I'm not sure I'd feel like it." J.D Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
"Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." Rhett Butler, Gone With the Wind
"I think of my life as a kind of music; not always good music but still having form and melody." John Steinbeck, East of Eden
"I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life." F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
"We need never be ashamed of our tears." Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
"What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person." John Green, Paper Towns
"And at home by the fire, whenever you look up, there I shall be– and whenever I look up, there will be you." Thomas Harding, Far From the Madding Crowd
"So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad at the same time and I am still trying to figure out how this could be." Stephen Chbosky, Perks of Being a Wallflower
"Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs." Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
"A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it." Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan
" I can't go back to yesterday because I was a different person then." Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
"And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good." John Steinbeck, East of Eden
"I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded; now with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering it's things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night." Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
"It does not do well to dwell on dreams and forget to live, remember that." J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
"One must be careful of books, and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us." Cassandra Clare, The Infernal Devices
