I am a self-professed quote hunter. Think ghost hunter but instead of hunting for ghosts, I'm that person that spends hours on the internet scouring webpages of quotes to find my favorite ones. In this quest, I've come to a pivotal realization: there is no comprehensive list of the best quotes from literature that I'm satisfied with. And because I'm obsessed with writing and quotes, I decided that it was my personal mission to create one of these comprehensive, but brief, lists. I bring you the first installment of this 4-5 part series of weeding out what I think represent some of the most incredible, powerful, and beautiful lines from literature: Quotehunters: 20 Best Quotes from Books of ALL TIME.

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

2. "Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?" J.K. Rowling / Harry Potter

3. "I shall feel proud and satisfied to have been the first author to enjoy the full fruit of his writings, as I desired, because my only desire has been to make men hate those false, absurd histories in books of chivalry, which thanks to the exploits of my real Don Quixote are even now tottering, and without any doubt will soon tumble to the ground. Farewell." – Miguel de Cervantes / Don Quijote

4. "In our village, folks say God crumbles up the old moon into stars." – Alexander Solzhenitsyn / A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

5."And the rest is rust and stardust." – Vladimir Nabokov / Lolita

6. "The old man was dreaming about the lions." – Ernest Hemingway / The Old Man and the Sea

7. "In the midst of life, we are in death." – Agatha Christie / And Then There Were None

8. "The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared." – Lois Lowry / The Giver

9. "There is only one sin, and that is theft ... when you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth." – Khaled Hosseini / The Kite Runner

10. "There was the hum of bees, and the musky odor of pinks filled the air." – Kate Chopin / The Awakening

11. "Sometimes people are beautiful. Not in looks. Not in what they say. But in what they are." – Markus Zusak / I am the Messenger

12. "We changed again, and yet again, and it was now too late and too far to go back, and I went on. And the mists had solemnly risen now, and the world lay spread out before me." – Charles Dickens / Great Expectations

13. "There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired." – F. Scott Fitzgerald / The Great Gatsby

14. "And so it goes ..." – Kurt Vonnegut / Slaughterhouse-Five

15. "One was a book thief. Another stole the sky." – Markus Zusak / The Book Thief

16. "Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes." – Oscar Wilde / A Picture of Dorian Grey

17. "Persons attempting to find motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot." – Mark Twain / The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

18. "That's all I'd all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know its crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be." – J.D. Salinger / Catcher in the Rye

19. "I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand." Harper Lee / To Kill a Mockingbird

20. "Because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth." –Gabriel Garcia Marquez / 100 Years of Solitude