Some of My Favorite Quotes from Books

Today's Top Ten Tuesday topic is Favorite Book Quotes. I used to collect quotes avidly, filling notebooks with every saying I stumbled upon that resonated with me in any way. These days, I'm not as organized about it, but I do occasionally add quotes to Goodreads so I can look back on them later. The quotations in today's post are taken from my old notebooks, lines I mentioned in reviews on this blog, and my collection of quotes on Goodreads. All are from works I have read at some point, with the exception of the Edna St. Vincent Millay collection, from which I have only read selections.

	They looked for one another when nothing else was happening, the way you pick up a magazine or look in the cupboard for a snack. Not exactly by accident and not exactly on purpose. You could go out in the world and do new things and meet new people, and then you could come home and just sit on the stoop with someone you had never not known, and watch lightning bugs blink on and off. (Criss Cross by Lynne Rae Perkins)
	I used to think that when I grew up there wouldn't be so many rules. Back in elementary school there were rules about what entrance you used in the morning, what door you used going home, when you could talk in the library, how many paper towels you could use in the rest room, and how many drinks of water you could get during recess. And there was always somebody watching to make sure. What I'm finding out about growing older is that there are just as many rules about lots of things, but there's nobody watching. (Alice in Rapture, Sort Of by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor)
	The sandy beach reminded Harold of picnics. And the thought of picnics made him hungry. So he laid out a nice simple picnic lunch. There was nothing but pie. But there were all nine kinds of pie that Harold liked best. When Harold finished his picnic there was quite a lot left. He hated to see so much delicious pie go to waste. So Harold left a very hungry moose and a deserving porcupine to finish it up. (Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson)
	Love in the open hand, no thing but that, Ungemmed, unhidden, wishing not to hurt, As one should bring you cowslips in a hat Swung from the hand, or apples in her skirt, I bring you, calling out as children do: “Look what I have!—And these are all for you.” ("Fatal Interview" from Edna St. Vincent Millay - Selected Poems edited by J.D. McClatchy)
	Everyone has a moment in history which belongs particularly to him. It is the moment when his emotions achieve their most powerful sway over him, and afterward when you say to this person "the world today" or "life" or "reality" he will assume that you mean this moment, even if it is fifty years past. (A Separate Peace by John Knowles)
	We cross our bridges as we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and the presumption that once our eyes watered. (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard)
	"You see," Franny would explain, years later, "we aren't eccentric, we're not bizarre. To each other," Franny would say, "we're as common as rain." And she was right: to each other, we were as normal and nice as the smell of bread, we were just a family. In a family, even exaggerations make perfect sense; they are always they are always logical exaggerations, nothing more. (The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving)
	A thing is magic if you get what you want through it: but if it is blessed you get what God wants through it. (Sun Slower, Sun Faster by Meriol Trevor)
	If you remain calm in the midst of great chaos, it is the surest guarantee that it will eventually subside. (The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles by Julie Andrews Edwards)