Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire

★★★

"If the lives of children, pumpkins turn into coaches, mice and rats turn into men.  When we grow up, we realized it is far more common for men to turn into rats."

"If magic was present, it moved under the skin of the world, beneath the ability of human eyes to catch sight of it."

The Upstairs Room by Johanna Reiss

★★★

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne

★★★★★

"...Despite the mayhem that followed, Bruno found he was still holding Shmuel's hand in his own and nothing in the world would have persuaded him to let go.."

Feed by M. T. Anderson

★★★★

"We Americans are interested only in the consumption of our products.  We have no interest in how they are produced, or what happens to them one we discard them, one we throw them away."

"We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck."

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

★★★★★

"That's what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you to another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book.  It's geometrically progressive - all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment."

Shabanu: Daughter of the Wind by Suzanne Fisher Staples

★★★★

"But beauty holds only part of a man, and that for just so long.  Keep some of yourself hidden.  You can lavish love and praise on him and work hard by his side...But the secret is keeping your innermost beauty, the secret of your soul, locked in your heart so that he must always reach out to you for it?"

Looking for Alaska by John Green

★★★★

"When adults say, 'Teenagers think they are invincible' with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are.  We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken.  We think that we are invincible because we are.  We cannot be born, and we cannot die.  Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations.  They forget that when they get old.  They get scared of losing and failing.  But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail."

"Thomas Edison's last words were 'It's very beautiful over there.' I don't know where there is, but I believe ti's somewhere, and I hope to find it."