The widow begs you, therefore, if you ever pass through our village, to be good enough to spend the night in her house as her guest, and when you leave in the morning, to take the santuri with you.

Nikos Kazantzakis, from Zorba the Greek (thank you, patoisdujour)

Maybe it’s time to meet him in the proper light.

Flipped by Wendelin Van Draanen (thanks, fayeistheflyest)

As Logan walked toward her, he smiled as if reading her mind and opened his arms.

Nicholas Sparks, from The Lucky One (thanks, frozen-ocean)

[When your laboratory explodes, lacing your body with a supercharged elixir, what do you do? You don’t just lie there. You crawl out of the rubble, hideously scarred, and swear vengeance on the world. You keep going.] You keep trying to take over the world.

Austin Grossman, from Soon I Will Be Invincible (thanks, talesofearth)

I have ever thought
Nature doth nothing so great for great men
As when she ’s pleas’d to make them lords of truth:
Integrity of life is fame’s best friend,
Which nobly, beyond death, shall crown the end.

John Webster, from “The Duchess of Malfi” (thanks, greenkneehighs)

And then his arm came round me, solid, safe, and drew me firmly back against the shelter of his chest, and I felt peace, and turned my face against the pillow, and I slept.

Susanna Kearsley, from The Winter Sea (thanks, thevorpalsword)

In my next life I want to accept things as they are and when people ask why, I want to say what do you mean why, and when everyone comes back for homecoming I want to already be home.

Elizabeth Crane, from All this Heavenly Glory (thanks, the-jewitch)

[The morning weighs on my shoulders with the dreadful weight of hope and I take the blue envelope which Jacques has sent me and tear it slowly into many pieces, watching them dance in the wind, watching the wind carry them away.] Yet, as I turn and begin walking toward the waiting people, the wind blows some of them back to me.

James Baldwin, from “Giovanni’s Room” (thanks, nothingtodowithexplosions)

And it cast its pale light upon the three glasses of wine that had each been left deliberately behind, brim-full, on a stone table, a stone bench, on the rim of the fountain there.

Guy Gavriel Kay, from The Lions of Al-Rassan (thanks, fernoppy)

Eleven blind girls from Julius The Apostolics orphanage came singing down the road.

Boris Vian, from The Foam of Days (L’écume des jours), trans. by Lars Erik Sundberg (thanks, mirandaholmqvist)