What They Wrote.

PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by JAMES JOYCE

The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails. 

LIFE AS WE KNEW IT by SUSAN BETH PFEFFER

I guess I always felt even if the world came to an end, McDonald's would still be open.

1984 by GEORGE ORWELL

They could not alter your feelings; for that matter you could not alter them yourself, even if you wanted to. They could lay bare in the utmost detail everything that you had done or said or thought; but the inner heart, whose workings were mysterious even to yourself, remained impregnable."

THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Reason is a scoundrel, stupidity is direct and honest.

STRANGE ANGELS by LILI ST. CROW

I'll take a plain girl with her head screwed on right over a cheerleader any day.

THE CASTLE by FRANZ KAFKA

...I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with iron bars, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more.

ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST by KEN KESEY

He's got hands so long and white and dainty I think they carved each other out of soap, and sometimes they get loose and glide around in front of him free as two white birds until he notices them and traps them between his knees; it bothers him that he's got pretty hands.

THE KNIFE OF NEVER LETTING GO by PATRICK NESS

He smiles down at me, thru that beard of his, smiles down at me in the grass. A smiling fist.

THE MONK by MATTHEW LEWIS

An Author, whether good or bad, or between both, is an Animal whom every body is privileged to attack; For though All are not able to write books, all conceive themselves able to judge them.

NAKED LUNCH by WILLIAM BURROUGHS 

Rock and Roll adolescent hoodlums storm the streets of all nations. They rush into the Louvre and throw acid in the Mona Lisa's face.

REVOLUTION by JENNIFER DONNELLY

I don't like hope very much. In fact, I hate it. It's the crystal meth of emotions. It hooks you fast and kills you hard. It's bad news. The worst. It's sharp sticks and cherry bombs. When hope shows up, it's only a matter of time until someone gets hurt.

THE HANDMAID'S TALE by MARGARET ATWOOD

I sit at the little table, eating creamed corn with a fork.  I have a fork and a spoon, but never a knife.  When there's meat they cut it up for me ahead of time, as if I'm lacking manual skills or teeth.  I have both, however.  That's why I'm not allowed a knife.

ATLAS SHRUGGED by AYN RAND

He liked to observe emotions; they were like red lanterns strung along the dark unknown of another's personality, marking vulnerable points. But how one could feel a personal emotion about a metal alloy, and what such an emotion indicated, was incomprehensible to him; so he could make no use of his discovery.

THE SHADOW OF THE WIND by CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON

...a story is a letter the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise.

BEAUTIFUL CREATURES by KAMI GARCIA & MARGARET STOHL

Teenagers- everything is so apocalyptic.

LOOKING FOR ALASKA by JOHN GREEN

She looked at me and smiled widely, and such a wide smile on her narrow face might have looked goofy were it not for the unimpeachably elegant green in her eyes.  She smiled with all the delight of a kid on Christmas morning and said, 'Ya'll smoke to enjoy it.  I smoke to die.' 

BLOOD MERIDIAN by CORMAC MCCARTHY

The way of the world is to bloom and to flower and die but in the affairs of men there is no waning and the noon of his expression signals the onset of night. His spirit is exhausted at the peak of its achievement. His meridian is at once his darkening and the evening of his day. He loves games? Let him play for stakes. This you see here, these ruins wondered at by tribes of savages, do you not think that this will be again? Aye. And again. With other people, with other sons.

THE AGE OF REASON by JEAN-PAUL SARTRE

Since then, Boris had regarded grown-ups as bulky and impotent divinities.

THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE by HARUKI MURAKAMI

Maybe the world has two different kinds of people, and for one kind the world is this completely logical, rice pudding place, and for the other it's all hit-or-miss macaroni gratin.

DELIRIUM by LAUREN OLIVER

Love: a single word, a wispy thing, a word no bigger or longer than an edge. That's what it is: an edge; a razor. It draws up through the center of your life, cutting everything in two. Before and after. The rest of the world falls away on either side. Before and after - and during, a moment no bigger or longer than an edge.

THE BOOK THIEF by MARKUS ZUSAK

So many humans. So many colors. They keep triggering inside me. They harass my memory. I see them tall in their heaps, all mounted on top of each other. There is air like plastic, a horizon like setting glue. There are skies manufactured by people, punctured and leaking, and there are soft, coal-colored clouds, beating like black hearts. And then. There is death. Making his way through all of it. On the surface: unflappable, unwavering. Below: unnerved, untied, and undone.

Hope you read something you liked. Have a good weekend. 

- Elena