And I dream that someday you will return to Kabul to revisit the land of our childhood. If you do, you will find an old faithful friend waiting for you.

I owe everything I am and everything I will ever be to books.

Oedipa sat on the earth, ass getting cold, wondering whether, as Driblette had suggested that night from the shower, some version of herself hadn't vanished with him. Perhaps her mind would go on...

They made a list of a hundred books to test their system. Symbolism not lost on the librarian, nor on the bestselling author, they pulled Fahrenheit 451 first. The Call of the Wild, The Catcher in the...

"... I hid myself between two leaves of sorrel, and there discharged the necessities of nature."

But that was another Mildred so deep inside this one, and so bothered, really bothered, that the two women had never met.

We think that tomorrow, unless we surrender, they may drop the moon on us. "You're joking." "Wish I was."

Turn my head, and you may go where you want. I turn it again, you will stay till you rot. I have no face, but I live or die by my crooked teeth—who am I?

No, and the sun will not rise today, Master Holbytla. Nor ever again, one would think under this cloud. But time does not stand still, though the Sun be lost. Make haste!

In the evening they went to say good-bye to Bilbo. 'Well, if you must go, you must,' he said. 'I am sorry. I shall miss you. It is nice just to know that you are about the place. But I am getting very...

We are lost, lost,' said Gollum. 'No name, no business, no Precious, nothing. Only empty. Only hungry; yes, we are hungry. A few little fishes, nasty bony little fishes, for a poor creature, and they...

And he smote the Balrog upon the mountainside.

Do I not say truly, Gandalf,' said Aragorn at last, 'that you could go whithersoever you wished quicker than I? And this I also say: you are our captain and our banner. The Dark Lord has Nine. But we...

But you speak of Master Gandalf, as if he was in a story that had come to an end. 'Yes, we do,' said Pippin sadly. 'The story seems to be going on, but I am afraid Gandalf has fallen out of it.

No dragon can resist the fascination of riddling talk and of wasting time trying to understand it.

I come from under the hill, and under the hills and over the hills my paths led. And through the air, I am he that walks unseen. I am the clue-finder, the web-cutter, the stinging fly. I was chosen...

The road goes ever on and on

He looked more dead than many corpses

then Malloy took the gun away from whoever did it.

He had a sort of dry musty smell, like a fairly clean Chinaman.

She approached me with enough sex appeal to stampede a businessmen's lunch

There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights...

The plays he had liked were the one called Measure for Measure, and another one called Macbeth. They were easy to follow, and what happened in them was kind of like what happened in junior high...

Writing a novel—actually picking the words and filling in paragraphs—is a tremendous pain in the ass. Now that TV's so good and the Internet is an endless forest of distraction, it's damn near...

The unqualified truth is, that when I loved Estella with the love of a man, I loved her simply because I found her irresistible. Once for all; I knew to my sorrow, often and often, if not always, that...

Glad to find you so merry, my girls," said a cheery

I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.

I felt that this magical moment would never happen again... I started to experience the vertigo of the cliff and think how easy it would be to drag her into the abyss with me.

You will see me, like a mountain animal, bitter little animal

Unsociable even at home and unable to meet the eyes of strangers when she ventured out, Emily made her awkward way across days and years whose bareness appalls her biographers.