Insurgent by Veronica Roth

Notes from the reader: replace the concept of "factions" from the book with any label you may have put on yourself to help find like-minded people to fully understand what the author is saying. We all have our factions, even if they're chosen rather than forced upon us. (E.g.: nerd, jock... stoner?)

--110--

"No factions? A world in which no one knows who they are or where they fit? I can't even fathom it. I imagine only chaos and isolation."

--155--

"The Candor sing the praises of the truth, but they never tell you how much it costs."

--157--

"I wonder how long Al stood at the ledge before he pitched himself over it, into the Dauntless pit.

He must have stood there for a long time, making a list of all the terrible things he had done--almost killing me was one of those things--and another list of all the good, heroic, brave things he had not done, and then decided that he was tired. Tired, not just of living, but of existing. Tired of being Al."

--168--

"I think it would be easier to fight in a dress. It would give your legs freer movement. And who really cares if you flash people your underwear, as long as you're kicking the crap out of them?"

--203--

"I can't even think of a word strong enough to describe him. Apparently I need to expand my vocabulary."

--283--

"By the time the fight dies down, my clothes are more paint-colored than black. I decide to keep the shirt to remind me why I chose Dauntless in the first place: not because they are perfect, but because they are alive. Because they are free."

--289--

"I try to think of something helpful to say. I'm not going to die--but I don't know that. We live in a dangerous world, and  am not so attached to life that I will do anything to survive. I can't reassure him."

--329--

"I used to think that cruelty required malice, but that is not true. Jeanine has no reason to act out of malice. But she is cruel because she doesn't care what she does, as long as it fascinates her. I may as well be a puzzle or a broken machine she wants to fix. She will break open my skull just to see the inner workings of my brain; I will die here, and that wil be the merciful thing."

--331-2--

"I am like Jeanine. And I can either despise it, attack it, eradicate it. . . or I can use it."

--332--

"When I was young, I thought that was like heaven would be like, all white light and nothing else. Now I know that can't be true, because white light is menacing."

--377--

"I knew by the way he looked at her that he held her in a higher regard than he held even himself. No selfishness or insecurity kept him from seeing the full extent of her goodness, as it so often does with the rest of us."

--?--

"Grief is not as heavy as guilt, but it takes more away from you."

--410--

"I feel, as I look at him, that I am finally seeing him as he is, instead of how he is in relation to me. So how well do I really know him, if I have not seen this before?"

--418--

""And while he has done cruel, evil things, our society is not divided into "good" and "Bad." Cruelty does not make a person dishonest, the same way bravery does not make a person kind. Marcus is not good or bad, but both."

--510--

"People, I have discovered, are layers and layers of secrets. You believe you know them, that you understand them, but their motives are always hidden from you, buried in their own hearts. You will never know them, but sometimes you decide to trust them."

A Brave New World by Alduous Huxley

---42---

"Stability. No civilization without social stability. No social stability without individual stability."

---49---

"Government'san affair of sitting, not hitting. You rule with the brains and the buttocks, never with the fists."

---64---

"Bernard gave his orders in the sharp, rather arrogant and even offensive tone of one who does not feel himself too secure in his superiority."

---65---

"The mockery made him feel like an outsider; and feeling like an outsider he behaved like one, which increased the contempt and hostility aroused by his physical defects. Which in turn increased his sense of being alien and alone. A chronic fear of being slighted made him avoid his equals, made him stand, where his inferiors were concerned, self conciously on his dignity."

---70---

Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly--they'll go through anything. You read and you're pierced."

---90---

"But I do. . . It makes me feels as though. . . as though I were more me, if you see what I mean. More on my own, not so completely a part of something else. Not just a cell in the social body. "

---148---

"Murder kills only the individual--and, after all, what is an individual?We can make a new one with the greatest ease-- as many as we like.  Unorthodoxy threatens more than the life of a mere individual; it strikes Society itself. "

---157---

"Success went fizzily to Bernard's head, and in the process completely reconciled him (as any good intoxicant should do) to a world which, up until then, he had found very unsatisfactory. In so far as it recognized him as important, the order of things was good."

---221---

"Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand."

---222-3---

"Only an Epsilon can be expected to make Epsilon sacrifices, for the good reason that for him they aren't sacrifices; they're the line of least resistance. His conditioning has laid down rails along which he's got to run. He can't help himself; He's fordoomed. Even after decanting he's still inside a bottle--an invisible bottle of infantile and embryonic fixations. Each one of us, of course, goes through life inside a bottle. But if we happen to be Alphas, our bottles are, relatively speaking, enormous. We should suffer acutely if we were confined in a narrower space."

---223---

"The optimum population is modelled on the iceberg--eight-ninths below the water line, one-ninth above."

---228---

"One can't have something for nothing. Happiness has got to be paid for. You're paying for it, Mr. Watson--paying because you happen to be too much interested in beauty. I was too much interested in truth; I paid too."

---233---

"Yes, we inevitably turn to God; for this religious sentiment is of its nature so pure, so delightful to the soul the experiences it, that it makes up to us for all our other losses."

---235-6---

"The gods are just. No doubt. But their code of law is dictated, in the last resort, by the people who organize society; Providence takes its cue from men."

The Magicians: A Novel by Lev Grossman

Note to the reader: This book is in no way the same as the TV show. Do not go into the book expecting it to be. Major plot points and names are borrowed from by the show, and that is all that can be said.

***.***.***

"Walking along Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn, in his black overcoat and his gray interview suit, Quentin knew he wasn’t happy. Why not? He had painstakingly assembled all the ingredients of happiness. He had performed all the necessary rituals, spoken the words, lit the candles, made the sacrifices. But happiness, like a disobedient spirit, refused to come. He couldn’t think what else to do."

.

"The real problem with being around James was that he was always the hero. And what did that make you? Either the sidekick or the villain."

.

"He was absolutely prepared for this interview in every possible way. . . . but now that the ripened fruit of all that preparation was right in front of him he suddenly lost any desire for it."

.

"He was used to this anticlimactic feeling, where by the time you’ve done all the work to get something you don’t even want it anymore."

.

"But despite his odd appearance Eliot had an air of effortless self-possession that made Quentin urgently want to be his friend, or maybe just be him period. He was obviously one of those people who felt at home in the world—he was naturally buoyant, where Quentin felt like he had to dog-paddle constantly, exhaustingly, humiliatingly, just to get one sip of air."

.

"And if you tell him you saw me smoking, I will banish you to the lowest circle of hell. Which I’ve never been there, but if even half of what I hear is true it’s almost as bad as Brooklyn.”

.

"He was experimenting cautiously with the idea of being happy, dipping an uncertain toe into those intoxicatingly carbonated waters. It wasn’t something he’d had much practice at."

.

"Out there he had been on the edge of serious depression, and worse, he had been in danger of learning to really dislike himself. He was on the verge of incurring the kind of inward damage you didn’t heal from, ever."

.

"It occurred to him, long after it should have, that he wasn’t the only person here who had problems and felt like an outsider. Alice wasn’t just the competition, someone whose only purpose in life was to succeed and by doing so subtract from his happiness. She was a person with her own hopes and feelings and history and nightmares. In her own way she was as lost as he was."

.

“Most people are blind to magic. They move through a blank and empty world. They’re bored with their lives, and there’s nothing they can do about it. They’re eaten alive by longing, and they’re dead before they die."

.

"That guy was a mystery wrapped in an enigma and crudely stapled to a ticking fucking time bomb. He was either going to hit somebody or start a blog. To tell you the truth I’m kind of glad he hit you.”

.

"He wasn’t in a safe little story where wrongs were automatically righted; he was still in the real world, where bad, bitter things happened for no reason, and people paid for things that weren’t their fault."

.

"They were in the library in the Cottage, exhausted from having done nothing all day."

.
"She couldn’t help it, it was just her neurotic need to control everything coming out to play, but that didn’t make it any less of a pain in the ass for the rest of them."

.
“You have been studying magic the way a parrot studies Shakespeare. You recite it like you are saying the Pledge of Allegiance. But you do not understand it.”

.
"Quentin had no intention of letting that happen to him, though it occurred to him that probably nobody actually set out to have that happen to them, and, statistically speaking, it had to happen to somebody."

.
“It’s okay, Quentin. It was nice. The sex, I mean. You do realize it’s all right to have nice things sometimes, right?”

.
"She has already seen more unhappiness, Quentin thought, than I will ever see in my life."

.
"This was real, human sex, and it was so much better just because they weren’t animals—because they were civilized and prudish and self-conscious humans who transformed into sweaty, lustful, naked beasts, not through magic but because that’s who on some level they really were all along."

.
"God, why is everybody else in the world but us so fucking stupid?”

.
“The problem with growing up,” Quentin said, “is that once you’re grown up, people who aren’t grown up aren’t fun anymore.”

.
“Do you promise to hate my parents as much as I do?”

“Oh, absolutely,” Quentin said. “Maybe even more.”

.
"He wondered, theoretically, which of them had it worse. Alice’s parents were toxic monsters, but at least you could see it. His own parents were more like vampires or werewolves—they passed for human. He could rave about their atrocities all he wanted, he knew the villagers would never believe him till it was too late."

.
"You don’t see it yet. There’s nothing out there. So you have to promise me, Quentin. Let’s never get like this, with these stupid hobbies nobody cares about. Just doing pointless things all day and hating each other and waiting to die.”

.
It was like he’d been wending his way through a vast glittering city, zig-zagging through side streets and wandering through buildings and haunted de Chirico arcades and little hidden piazzas, the whole time thinking that he’d barely scratched the surface, that he was seeing just a tiny sliver of one little neighborhood. And then suddenly he turned a corner and it turned out he’d been through the whole city, it was all behind him, and all that was left was one short street leading straight out of town.

.
"If there’s a single lesson that life teaches us, it’s that wishing doesn’t make it so. Words and thoughts don’t change anything. Language and reality are kept strictly apart—reality is tough, unyielding stuff, and it doesn’t care what you think or feel or say about it. Or it shouldn’t. You deal with it, and you get on with your life."

.
"I got my heart’s desire, he thought, and there my troubles began."

.
“We have our whole lives ahead of us and all I want to do is take a nap,”

.
"He was not yet such a lush that he’d abandoned his snobbishness."

.
"You sound just like my parents. That is just exactly what my ignorant Christian parents would say. Just, if it doesn’t fit with your theory, well, that’s just because, oh, it actually does, but God is mysterious, so we can’t see it. Because we’re so sinful. That’s so fucking easy.”

.
"She always kept a cool head in difficult moments, maybe because she tended to be so out of control so much of the rest of the time."

.
"The world had become smaller and somehow lighter—nothing meant anything, but what was meaning anyway but a burden that weighed them down?"

.
"Daylight was here, and with it had come the world of appearances and lies and acting like everything was fine."

.
"Who knows what other imaginary universes might turn out to be real? All of human literature could just be a user’s guide to the multiverse!"

.
"This was what they’d been waiting for, too, without knowing it, he thought. The thing that was going to save them from the ennui and depression and meaningless busywork that had been stalking them ever since graduation, with its stale, alcoholic breath. It was finally here, and not a moment too soon. They couldn’t go on like this, and now they wouldn’t have to."

.
"Seeing her there, so close and at the same time so infinitely removed, was like looking through a doorway into another universe, a warm, sunny, tropical dimension that he had once inhabited, but from which he was now banished."

.
"He just stared at his lap and waited for each successive second to impose itself on him in turn like an uninvited guest the way the previous one had."

.
"Anyway, the mood he was in, Quentin was willing to take any position on any subject with anybody if it meant he could pick a fight."

.
"The danger would be going back, or staying still. The only way out was through. The past was ruins, but the present was still in play."

.
"It was so much easier to be angry. Being angry made him feel strong, even though—and this contradiction did nothing to diminish his anger—he was angry only because his position was so weak."

.
“Glory has its price,” Penny said. “Did you not know that, before you sought it?”

.
"In a way fighting like this was just like using magic. You said the words, and they altered the universe. By merely speaking you could create damage and pain, cause tears to fall, drive people away, make yourself feel better, make your life worse."

.
"He wanted to tell Alice he didn’t love her, but he couldn’t, because it wasn’t true. It was the one lie he couldn’t quite tell."

.
"If you will, for just one second, look at your life and see how perfect it is. Stop looking for the next secret door that is going to lead you to your real life. Stop waiting. This is it: there’s nothing else. It’s here, and you’d better decide to enjoy it or you’re going to be miserable wherever you go, for the rest of your life, forever.”

.
"The terror was so absolute, so all-encompassing, that it was almost like calm: not a suspicion but the absolute certainty that they were all about to die."

.
"This woman had used him, used them all like toys. And if some of the toys got broken, oh well. That had been the real point of the whole story all along."

.
"Now he had answers, but they weren’t doing what answers were supposed to do: they weren’t making things simpler or easier. They weren’t helping."

.
"He could have eked out his sad wasted life with movies and books and masturbation and alcohol like everybody else. He would never have known the horror of really getting what he thought he wanted. He could have spared himself and everybody else the cost of it."

.
"In different ways they had both discovered the same truth: that to live out childhood fantasies as a grown-up was to court and wed and bed disaster."

.
"They were like two recovering alcoholics, hopped up on caffeine and Twelve Step gospel, telling each other how glad they were to be sober and then talking about nothing but drinking."

Supernatural (TV) Seasons 8-9

S8E21

Metatron- "When you create stories, you become gods of tiny, intricate 
dimensions unto themselves. So many worlds!"

S9E4

Haggerty (Man of Letters)- "There's nothing worse than adventure. Trust me."

S9E7

Dean- "Farm looks, uh, nice."
Sonny- "Oh please, man. It's barely standing. Only got a handful 
of kids working around here now."
Dean- "Why's that?"
Sonny- "Because these days the system would rather 
incarcerate a boy than redeem him."

S9E18

Metatron- "That was God's problem, you know. He published the first draft."

S9E21

Crowley's son (Gavin)- "You sold your soul? Sold it! For an extra three inches of willy?" 


Crowley's son (Gavin)-  "I-I can't be consorting with a demon"

Crowley- "Not just any demon! I'm the king! The king of hell! 
And there you were, worried the old man wouldn't amount to much."

S9E15

Dean- "I dunno man. 'cause lately with you up is down and down is.. sideways. 
You know. I, I don't know what you want."

Ed- "I don't want to be a jellyfish spine anymore, Harry."
Harry- "Jellyfish don't have spines."
Ed- "Exactly."

UnWholly By Neal Shusterman (Unwind Series)

Note about the author: Neal Shusterman is a critically acclaimed author whose book "Unwind" is now commonly taught in schools. Although it is categorized as Young Adult fiction due to the writing style, I would suggest people of all ages read it. It is a blatant satire that does not even try to hide its alignments with our society (no worrying about the meaning behind the blue curtains, if you catch my drift). 

***UnWholly***

'"Words don't hurt you." Which is one of the biggest criminal lies perpetrated by adults against children in this world. Because words hurt more than any physical pain.'

  

"We should call you the little mermaid. . . because they let you magically walk, in exchange for your voice."

  

"As for Pastor Dan, he's a hero to Lev for having the courage to lose his convictions without losing his faith."

  

"'So what religion are we?" . . . 

The question has become a running joke, and each time Pastor Dan has another answer.

"We're Pentupcostal because we're sick of all the hypocrisy."
"We're Clueish, because we finally got a clue."

"We're PresbyPterodactyl, because we're making this whole thing fly against all reason."'

  

"It made him feel both terribly uncomfortable and also a little bit blessed to be at the core of a spiritual movement, even if it was only a movement of two."

  

"I'm too old to rage against the system. I just whine at it."

  

'"Do you have any idea what you've put this family through? The shame? The ridicule?"

"Then maybe you shouldn't surround yourself with people as judgmental as you."

  

"How do you judge the brightness of a light when you're the source? A spotlight can never see the shadows it casts."

  

"'They call it 'deprogramming,' which is a polite term for undoing brainwashing with more brainwashing."

  

"There's a powerful surge against her soul, as relentless as the waves crashing below, reminding her that in time the strongest of mountains is eroded into the sea, and she doesn't know how much longer she can resist it, or even if she should."

  

"We'll talk again when you're over yourself."

  

"Stop apologizing for everything. Save it for your more important screwups." 

Gemma Doyle Trilogy (pt 1) by Libba Bray

***A Great and Terrible Beauty***

 “My annoyance has indeed been noted.”

“I could curse my bad temper, but it won’t get it back.”

“I want to ask him if it’s possible for a girl to be born unlovable, or does she just become that way?” 

“The vicar leads us in prayers that begin with ‘O Lord’ and end with our somehow not being worthy—sinners who have always been sinners and will forever more be sinners until we die. It isn’t the most optimistic outlook I’ve ever heard. But we’re encouraged to keep trying anyway.”

***Rebel Angels***

“All that we see or seem/Is but a dream within a dream” –Edgar Allan Poe

  
“In books, the truth makes everything good and fine. The good prevail. The wicked are punished. There is happiness. But it’s not really like that, is it?”

“No, I suppose it only makes everything known.”

The Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray (Gemma Doyle Trilogy- pt 2)

“Deep inside each one, a thin blue soul burns pure and hot, devouring every bit of tinder to keep the fire going.”

“They’ve planned our entire lives, from what we shall wear to whom we shall marry and where we shall live. It’s one lump of sugar in your tea whether you like it or not and you’d best smile even if you’re dying deep inside. We’re like pretty horses, and just as on horses, they mean to put blinders on us so we can’t look left or right but only straight ahead where they would lead.”

“They believe and belief changes everything.”

“Hours feel like seconds; seconds are hours, for time is a dream.”

“We create illusions we need to go on. And one day, when they no longer dazzle or comfort, we tear them down, brick by glittering brick, until we are left with nothing but the bright light of honesty. The light is liberating. Necessary. Terrifying. We stand naked and emptied before it. And when it is too much for our eyes to take, we build a new illusion to shield us from its relentless truth.” Fav

“Why should we girls not have the same privileges as men? Why do we police ourselves so stringently—whittling each other down with cutting remarks or holding ourselves back from greatness with a harness woven of fear and shame and longing? If we do not deem ourselves worthy first, how shall we ever ask for more? 

Candide by Voltaire

 (quotes included from the Candide Appreciation by Andre Maurois)

“I have left abundance where there was want before. True—only by ruining myself. But a man could not ruin himself in a more decent cause.”
   
“I am tired of hearing it declared that twelve men sufficed to establish Christianity, and I want to prove to them that it only needs one to destroy it.”
   
“What was the vile thing? Religion? The Church? To be more exact, it was Superstition. He hounded it down because he had suffered from it and because he believed that bigotry makes men more unhappy than they need to be.”
   
"The only book that should be read is the great book of nature.”
   
“I’ve wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but I still love life. That ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our most pernicious inclinations. What could be more stupid than to persist in carrying a burden that we constantly want to cast off, to hold our existence in horror, yet cling to it nonetheless, to fondle the serpent that devours us, until it has eaten our heart?”

~

'“Do you believe that men have always slaughtered each other as they do today, that they’ve always been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates and thieves, weak, fickle, cowardly, envious, greedy, drunken, miserly, ambitious, bloodthirsty, slanderous, lecherous, fanatical, hypocritical and foolish?”

“Do you believe that hawks have always eaten pigeons when they find them?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Well, then, if hawks have always had the same character, what makes you think men may have changed theirs?”'

Shiver Series By Maggie Stiefvater

***Forever***

“People don’t change who they are. They only change what they do with it.”

“The thing that I was beginning to figure out. . . was that that sort of love only worked when you were sure both people would always be around for each other. If one half of the equation left, or died, or was slightly less perfect in their love, it became the most tragic, pathetic story invented, laughable in its absurdity. Without Grace, Sam was a joke without a punch line.”

“Life was a cake that looked good on the bakery shelf but turned to sawdust and salt when I ate it.”

“It was possible that I’d thrown one too many Molotov cocktails over God’s fence. It would be, after all, a divinely ironic punishment to watch me learn to care and then destroy the things I cared about.”

Nikki Styx Series By Terri Garey

***Dead Girls Are Easy***

“You’ve awakened unto life, but the dream is not over yet.”

“Besides, who really needs an excuse to be bitchy or eat chocolate?”

“As long as there’s been evil, there’s been good—an everlastin’ war that’ll go on long after we’re gone. And this old woman gonna be on the winnin’ side. The Lord looks after his own.”

“The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.”

“You can be forgiven. But I think….I think first you have to forgive yourself.”

***A Match Made in Hell***

“That’s me. An enigma, bound up in a riddle, wrapped inside a paradox.”

“I shut up. Sometimes that’s all you can do.”

“As for any grand expectations about learning how to ‘go in style’, the only thing I learned was I didn’t wanna go like this. Give me a wild party and remember me fondly—don’t make me wish I was dead already.”

“That’s the problem with giving advice—you’re too often expected to take it.”

“The Devil was vanquished. All because I’d been willing to do the right thing, and she had trusted me to do it.”

“The only way to win against evil is not to play the game.”

Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

***Da Vinci Code***

“Symbologists often remarked that France—a country renowned for machismo, womanizing, and diminutive insecure leaders like Napoleon and Pepin the Short—could not have chosen a more apt national emblem than a thousand-foot phallus.”

“It was man, not God, who created the concept of ‘original sin,’ whereby Eve tasted of the apple and caused the downfall of the human race. Woman, once the sacred giver of life, was now the enemy.” 

“Meaning that history is always written by the winners. When two cultures clash, the loser is obliterated, and the winner writes the history books—books which glorify their own cause and disparage the conquered foe. As Napoleon said, ‘What is history, but a fable agreed upon?’ By its very nature, history is always a one-sided account.”

“Authors, even the sane ones are nuts.”

“Is it surprising we feel conflicted about sex? Our ancient heritage and our very physiologies tell us sex is natural—a cherished route to spiritual fulfillment—and yet modern religion decries it as shameful, teaching us to fear our sexual desire as the hand of the devil.”