Breaking Dawn by Stephanie Meyer

★★★

"Seven months ago, our triangular relationship seemed impossible, three different kinds of heartbreak that could not be avoided.  Now everything was in perfect balance.  It seemed hideously ironic that the puzzle pieces fit together just in time for all of them to be destroyed."

Eclipse by Stephanie Meyer

★★★

" 'The worst part...'  I hesitated, and then let words spill out in a flood of truth.  'The worse part is that I saw the whole thing - our whole life.  And I want it bad, Jake, I want it all.  I want to stay right here and never move.  I want to love you and make you happy.  And I can't, and it's killing me.  It's like Sam and Emily, Jake - I never had a choice.  Maybe that's why I was fighting against you so hard."

"He once again slid my ring into place on the third finger of my left hand.  Where it would stay - conceivably for the rest of eternity."

New Moon by Stephanie Meyer

★★★

"I was not allowed to think of him.  That was something I tried to be very strict about.  Of course I slipped - I was only human.  But, I was getting better, and so the pain was something I could avoid for days at a time now.  The tradeoff was the never-ending numbness.  Between pain and nothing, I'd chosen nothing." (Bella)

"Before you, Bella, my life was like a moonless night.  Very dark, but there were stars - points of light and reason...And then you shot across the sky like a meteor.  Suddenly everything was on fire; there was brilliancy, there was beauty." (Edward)

"I squared my shoulders and walked forward to meet my fate, with my destiny solidly at my side." (Bella)

Twilight by Stephanie Mayer

★★★★

"About three things I was absolutely positive.  First, Edward was a vampire.  Second, there was a part of him - and I didn't know how potent that part might be - that thirsted for my blood.  And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him."

The Passionate Teacher: A Practical Guide by Robert Fried

★★★

"I want students to engage the way a clutch on a car gets engaged: an engine can be running, making appropriate noises, burning fuel and creating exhaust fumes, but unless the clutch is engaged, nothing moves.  It's all sound and smoke, and nobody gets anywhere."

Music in Terezin 1941-1945 by Joza Karas

★★★★★

The Constant Princess by Philippa Gregory

★★★★★

"Her blue eyes when she turned them to him were hard, like the sapphires she had sold long ago.  Emissary, I was always going to be Queen of England."

The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory

★★★★★

" 'You'll be over looked for the rest of you life...You'll be a nobody forever.'  It was in the word 'nobody.'  At the very word bitterness drained out of me, and I smiled. 'You know, there might be some joy in being a nobody.' "

Uprising by Margaret Peterson Haddix

★★★★

"Mrs. Livingston stares off into the distance, off into the past, off into a time when she didn't know the first was coming.  'The story begins like so much else,' she says slowly.  'With hope.  Hope and dreams and daring."

" 'I think people remember the Triangle first because of the strike,' she tells Harriet.  'People had cheered us on.  They'd donated money to out cause, they'd bailed us out of jail, they'd marveled at our courage.  We weren't faceless and anonymously and easily forgotten after the strike.  And then so many of us died so young, so tragically, so soon after.  People left like they knew us.  They took our deaths personally."

"Bella had not known it was possible to stand shoulder to shoulder with another girl, one from Poland or Lithuania or some other place Bella had never heard of, both of them holding signs high over their heads, both of them longing just as strongly for eactly the sam thing.  Both of them completely connected."

Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally

★★★★★

"Stern agreed but suggested that the Biblical reference Herr Schindler had made could be summed up by a Talmundic verse which said that he who saves the life of one man saves the entire world."

"The list is an absolute good.  The list is life." (Itzhak Stern)

Schinder's List (Movie, 1993)

Ines of My Soul by Isabel Allende

★★

"I do however respect and admire the Mapuche; I cannot deny that.  Worthy enemies: Spaniards and Mapuche, equally courageous, brutal...and determined to live in Chile.  They were here long before we were, and that gives them the greater right, but the will never drive us out, and apparently, we will never live together in peace."

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

★★★★★

"From the experience, I understand the danger of focusing only on what isn't there.  What if I came to the end of my life and realized that I'd spent everyday watching for a man who would never come to me?  What an unbearable sorrow it would be, to realize I'd never really tasted the things I'd eaten, or seen that placed I'd been, because I'd thought of nothing but the chairman even while my life was drifting away from me.  And yet, If I drew my thoughts back from him, what life would I have?  I would be like a dancer who had practiced since childhood for a performance she would never give."

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

★★★★★

"These things I have named are but symbols of the things for which I risk my life, symbols of the kind of life I love.  For I am fighting for the old days, the old ways I love so much but which, I fear, are no gone forever, no matter how the die may fall.  For, win or lose, we lose just the same." (Ashley)

"She could look back, unmoved, at the pretty Scarlett with her fragile green morocco slippers and her flounces fragrant with lavender, but she wondered if she could be that same girl.  Scarlett O' Hara with the country  at her feet, a hundred slaves to do her bidding, the wealth of Tara like a wall behind her...somewhere, on the long road that would through those for ears, the girl with her sachet and dancing slippers had slipped away and there was left a women with sharp green eyes, who counted pennies and turned her hands into many menial tasks, a woman to whom nothing was left from the wreckage except the indestructible red earth on which she stood."

"Who am I to say?  I only know what I did, both when I was thrown out and nowadays.  I only know what other men have done.  We saw opportunity in the ruin of a civilization and we made the most of our opportunity, some honestly, some shadily, and we are still making the most of it." (Rhett)

"For years she had had her back against the stone wall of Rhett's love and had taken it as much for granted as she had taken Melanie's love, flattering herself that she drew her strength from herself alone."

"I'll think of it all tomorrow at Tara.  I can stand it then.  Tomorrow, I'll think of some way to get him back.  After all, tomorrow is another day." (Scarlett)

Sarah by Orson Scott Card

★★★★

"You can't stop thoughts like that from entering your head.  Faith doesn't mean that you never doubt.  It only means that you never act upon your doubts."

"Love is finding that the things you like best about yourself are not in you at all, but in the person who completes you."

"The love of a good man for a good women.  The love of good friends for each other. The love of parents for children, children for parents.  The love of brothers and sisters.  The memory of joy and grief, which all becomes joy when enough time has passed.  This is the treasure that I have won through all the years of my journey through this life.  And every bit of it I'll take with me beyond the grave.  I'll meet God then, and I will take all these treasures and lay them out before his feet, for God can see them easily even if mortal men cannot.  They were not mine by right.  But I hope that, having been given such gifts so undeservingly I used them well, and gave back to thee a life that was worthy."

"I believe in the Bible so seriously that I think it really is what it claims to be - a record, written by men, of stories that seemed important and truthful to them at the time of writing, using the standards of truth available to them at the time.  Our task, in reading the scriptures, is not to read it blindly as if God were dictating it to his secretary, but to read it faithfully, trying to understand what truths are being shown to use by means of, or in spite of, the words use to tell the tale."