Flaubert Quote #1

"It is so easy to chatter about the Beautiful. But it takes more genius to say, in proper style, “close the door,” or “he wanted to sleep,” than to give all the literature courses in the world." 

- Gustave Flaubert, Letters 

Annie Dillard Quote #1

"Children ten years old wake up and find themselves here, discover themselves to have been here all along; is this sad? They wake like sleepwalkers, in full stride; they wake like people brought back from cardiac arrest or drowning: in medias res..."-Annie Dillard, An American Childhood

Kurt Bonnegut Quote #1

"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before... He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way."

-- Kurt Vonnegut

EB WHITE Quote #1

"A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper."

- EB White

"Latimer Springfield was a rather cheerless, oldish young man, who went into politics somewhat in the spirit in which other people might go into half-mourning."

- Saki, "The Lull"

ENCHANTED Quote #1

"Before we are citizens, he thought, we are children, and it is as children that we come to understand freedom and authority, liberty and duty."

- Orson Scott Card
Enchanted

BROWNIES & OTHER TALES Quote #1

"The dew lay heavy and thick upon the grass by the roadside, and over the miles of network that the spiders had woven from blossom to blossom of the heather.  The dew is the Sun's breakfast; but he was barely up yet, and had not eaten it, and the world felt anything but warm." 

Juliana Horatia Ewing

The Brownies & Other Tales

THE NEDDIAD Quote #9

Upon seeing an evil ancient god:

"I don't know how to describe it -- it's like the devil, only I always pictures the devil as nicer."

Daniel Pinkwater
The Neddiad ch. 67

THE NEDDIAD Quote #8

I learned a new word from Daniel Pinkwater's The Neddiad:

"Melanistic" - adj. referring to animals that have an unusual amount of melanin in the skin tissue, making them darker than normal

THE NEDDIAD Quote #7

"The first thing I saw was an African lion, about one foot from my nose. I jumped ... It only took a second to realize that it was stuffed and not alive -- but you can go through quite a number of emotion in one second. The emotion I settled on was that it was an extremely neat thing."

Daniel Pinkwater
The Neddiad ch. 34

THE NEDDIAD Quote #6

"Of course, I had already had a rundown on the members of my class from my friend Seamus. No bullies, no snitches, no crybabies, no showoffs -- a pretty good bunch, he thought."

Daniel Pinkwater
The Neddiad ch. 30

THE NEDDIAD Quote #5

"If I had to sum up my first impression of Los Angeles in a few words, I would say it's a perfect combination of glamorous and crummy."

Daniel Pinkwater
The Neddiad ch. 22

THE NEDDIAD Quote #4

Start of a chapter after the hero steps on a plane for the first time:

"I love flying! I love flying! I love flying!"

Daniel Pinkwater
The Neddiad ch. 16

THE NEDDIAD Quote #3

"Billy the Phantom Bellboy said this was the best thing that had ever happened to him in his whole death."

Daniel Pinkwater
The Neddiad ch. 14

THE NEDDIAD Quote #2

Seeing the Grand Canyon:
"He kept thinking it was some fantastic big painting, or a movie set. There was a little building put up by the park service, with a model of the Grand Canyon made out of plaster and painted to look real ... in some strange way, looking at the model was more comfortable than looking at the actual thing. After looking at the model for a while, we went outside and found we were able to deal with the real canyon a little better."

Daniel Pinkwater
The Neddiad ch. 14

THE NEDDIAD Quote #1

"Up to now, all my adventures had been either small or completely imaginary."

Daniel Pinkwater
The Neddiad ch. 1

ORDER OF THE ODD FISH Quote #2

"At the age of thirty-nine, Ken Kiang had done it all. There was nothing worth owning that he hadn't collected, nothing worth doing that he hadn't done. He had drunk life to the full, but discovered to his dismay that no one was going to refill his cup."

James Kennedy
The Order of the Odd Fish ch. 5

ORDER OF THE ODD FISH Quote #1

"thirteen years of working with a man who has philosophical debates with his digestion! Often I'll be talking with him and then I realize he isn't responding to me at all, but chattering away with his precious intestines."

James Kennedy
The Order of the Odd Fish ch. 2

HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE Quote #4

"He was tallish, elderly and dressed in a single long gray robe. When he turned, his face was thin and distinguished, careworn but not unkind, the sort of fact you would happily bank with."

- Douglas Adams
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ch. 22

HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE Quote #3

"He never appeared to have a reason for anything he did at all: he had turned inscrutability into an art form."

- Douglas Adams
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ch. 14