Lately, I’ve been leaning toward kindness.

    — Gillian Flynn, from Sharp Objects

We’ll grow until our bones ache and our skin wrinkles and our hair goes white, and until our hearts decide, at last, that it’s time to stop.

    — Lauren DeStefano, from Sever

When it came night, the white waves paced to and fro in the moonlight, and the wind brought the sound of the great sea’s voice to the men on shore, and they felt that they could then be interpreters.

    — Stephen Crane, from “The Open Boat”

It’s not easy to get rid of unwanted things.

    — Miljenko Jergovic, from “The Gardener”, in Sarajevo Marlboro, translated by Stela Tomaševic

It was the strangest thing, but for the first time in a long time I almost felt serene.

    — Bill Bryson, from The Lost Continent

And there’s Jamie, standing on the cliff-edge, screwing up a piece of blue paper and throwing it into the sea.

    — Scarlett Thomas, from Bright Young Things