“Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.”

“Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine; —& they are the life, the soul of reading; — take them out of this book for instance, — you might as well take the book along with them.”

“People are best on records and books because you can turn them off or put them back on the shelf.”

“If someone claims to have free will, ask them, "free from precisely what?"”

“The shelf was filled with books that were hard to read, that could devastate and remake one's soul, and that, when they were finished, had a kick like a mule.”

“I raged across the field, killing all before me. They ran when they saw me coming, and I chased them down, and killed them before they could take someone else's friend away from them.”

“For it is often the way we look at other people that imprisons them within their own narrowest allegiances. And it is also the way we look at them that may set them free.”

“It's something everybody wants-for someone to see the hurt done to them and set it down like it matters.”

“Anyone that looked like that wouldn't need to tie up girls and imprison them in order to get them to marry him”

“When someone tells you something big, it's like you're taking money from them, and there's no way it will ever go back to being the way it was. You have to take responsibility for listening.”