"It's everybody, I mean. Everything everybody does is so — I don't know — not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and — sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you're conforming just as much only in a different way."

"I don't get it,' Caroline said, bemused. 'She's the only one with wings. Why is that?'There were so many questions in life. You couldn't ever have all the answers. But I knew this one.It's so she can fly,' I said. Then I started to run."

"If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life."

"There's gon' be some stuff you gon' seethat's gon' make it hard to smile in the future.But through whatever you see,through all the rain and the pain,you gotta keep your sense of humor.You gotta be able to smile through all this bullshit.Remember that."

"I want a life that sizzles and pops and makes me laugh out loud. And I don't want to get to the end, or to tomorrow, even, and realize that my life is a collection of meetings and pop cans and errands and receipts and dirty dishes. I want to eat cold tangerines and sing out loud in the car with the windows open and wear pink shoes and stay up all night laughing and paint my walls the exact color of the sky right now. I want to sleep hard on clean white sheets and throw parties and eat ripe tomatoes and read books so good they make me jump up and down, and I want my everyday to make God belly laugh, glad that he gave life to someone who loves the gift."

"Though the road's been rocky it sure feels good to me."

"I would rather be ashes than dust!I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot.I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.The function of man is to live, not to exist.I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them.I shall use my time."

"Is this thing safe?""Safe as life," Gansey replied."

"You can't just plan a moment when things get back on track, just as you can't plan the moment you lose your way in the first place."

"I want to live my life in such a way that when I get out of bed in the morning, the devil says, "aw shit, he's up!"

"As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.I wish you all very good lives."

"The truth is that the world is full of dragons, and none of us are as powerful or cool as we’d like to be. And that sucks. But when you’re confronted with that fact, you can either crawl into a hole and quit, or you can get out there, take off your shoes, and Bilbo it up."

"Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but ... life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves."

"When life gives you lemons, chunk it right back."

"But I have learned that you make your own happiness, that part of going for what you want means losing something else. And when the stakes are high, the losses can be that much greater."

"Too many people spend money they haven't earned, to buy things they don't want, to impress people that they don't like."

"All human beings have three lives: public, private, and secret."

"We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works."

"There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty. The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass! Who's been pinching my beer? And at the other end of the bar the world is full of the other type of person, who has a broken glass, or a glass that has been carelessly knocked over (usually by one of the people calling for a larger glass) or who had no glass at all, because he was at the back of the crowd and had failed to catch the barman's eye."

"I want words at my funeral. But I guess that means you need life in your life."

"At some point we all look up and realize we are lost in a maze."

"Even for me life had its gleams of sunshine."