8Knowing, above all, that I would come looking, and find what he had left for me, all that remained of The Jungle Book in the pocket of his doctor’s coat, that folder-up, yellowed page torn from the back of the book, with a bristle of thick, coarse hairs clenced inside. Galina, says my grandfather’s handwriting, above and below a child’s drawing of the tiger, who is curved like the blade of a scimitar across the page. Galina, it says, and that is how I know to find him again, in Galina, in the story he hadn’t told me but perhaps wished he had.
—Téa Obreht (The Tiger’s Wife)
Initially, he worried that he might be going crazy. But then he decided if you felt you were crazy you weren’t really crazy because he had heard somewhere that crazy people didn’t know they were insane.
—Gary Paulsen (Brian’s Winter)
If books could have more, give more, be more, show more, they would still need readers who bring to them sound and smell and light and all the rest that can’t be in books.
The book needs you.
—Gary Paulsen (The Winter Room)
When we die, we will turn into songs, and we will hear each other and remember each other.
—Rob Sheffield (Love is a Mixtape)
Death and disaster are at our shoulders every second of our lives, trying to get at us. Missing, a lot of the time. A lot of miles on the motorway without a front wheel blow-out. A lot of viruses that slither through our bodies without snagging. A lot of pianos that fall a minute after we’ve passed. Or a month, it makes no difference. So unless we’re going to get down on our knees and give thanks every time disaster misses, it makes no sense to moan when it strikes.
—Hugh Laurie (The Gun Seller)
Each relationship between two persons is absolutely unique. That is why you cannot love two people the same. It simply is not possible. You love each person differently because of who they are and the uniqueness that they draw out of you.
—William P. Young (The Shack)
For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.
—Rudyard Kipling (The Jungle Book)
Memories are what warm you up from the inside. But they’re also what tear you apart.
—Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)
