“Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.” — The Illuminated Rumi by Jalal Al-Din Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks

“You and I, it’s as though we have been taught to kiss in heaven and sent down to earth together, to see if we know what we were taught.” — Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

“You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.” — The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams

Wondering whether to make a new list for 2017? These insights might influence you:

Lists of books we reread and books we can’t finish tell more about us than about the relative worth of the books themselves. — Russell Banks

Poetry and novels are lists of our devotions. We love the feel of making the marks as the feelings are rising and falling. — Eileen Myles

We like lists because we don’t want to die. — Umberto Eco

We have a lot of books in our house. They are our primary decorative motif-books in piles and on the coffee table, framed book covers, books sorted into stacks on every available surface, and of course books on shelves along most walls. Besides the visible books, there are books waiting in the wings, the basement books, the garage books, the storage locker books…They function as furniture, they prop up sagging fixtures and disguised by quilts function as tables…I can’t imagine a home without an overflow of books. The point of books is to have way too many but to always feel you never have enough, or the right one at the right moment, but then sometimes to find you’d longed to fall asleep reading the Aspern Papers, and there it is. – Louise Erdrich

My books hold between their covers every story I’ve ever known and still remember, or have now forgotten, or may one day read; they fill the space around me with ancient and new voices. — Alberto Manguel

The acclaimed author Pat Conroy, who died earlier this year, was a teacher before he became a published writer. He chronicled his teaching experience in the award-winning The Water is Wide, which became the basis of the 1974 feature film, Conrack. Here is a lovely piece he wrote about the lifelong influence of teachers and books:

The world of literature has everything in it, and it refuses to leave anything out. I have read like a man on fire my whole life because the genius of English teachers touched me with the dazzling beauty of language. Because of them I rode with Don Quixote and danced with Anna Karenina at a ball in St. Petersburg and lassoed a steer in “Lonesome Dove” and had nightmares about slavery in “Beloved” and walked the streets of Dublin in “Ulysses” and made up a hundred stories in the Arabian nights and saw my mother killed by a baseball in “A Prayer for Owen Meany.” I’ve been in ten thousand cities and have introduced myself to a hundred thousand strangers in my exuberant reading career, all because I listened to my fabulous English teachers and soaked up every single thing those magnificent men and women had to give. I cherish and praise them and thank them for finding me when I was a boy and presenting me with the precious gift of the English language.

I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all it is cracked up to be. But writing is. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do—the actual act of writing—turns out to be the best part. It’s like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward. – Anne Lamott

Publishing a book is like stuffing a note into a bottle and hurling it into the sea. Some bottles drown, some come safe to land, where the notes are read and then possibly cherished, or else misinterpreted, or else understood all too well by those who hate the message. You never know who your readers might be. – Margaret Atwood

An author who gives a manager or publisher any rights in his work except those immediately and specifically required for its publication or performance is for business purposes an imbecile. – George Bernard Shaw

April hath put a spirit of youth in everything. – William Shakespeare

Again the blackbirds sings; the streams / Wake, laughing, from their winter dreams, / And tremble in the April showers / The tassels of the maple flowers. — John Greenleaf Whittier

April comes like an idiot, babbling and stewing flowers. – Edna St. Vincent Millay

April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain. – T.S. Elliot

We’re celebrating St. Patrick’s Day with quotes from Irish writers about the power of words:

If you have the words, there’s always a chance that you’ll find the way. – Seamus Heaney

It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it. – Oscar Wilde

Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. – James Joyce

We read to know we are not alone. – C.S. Lewis

All the words that I utter,
And all the words that I write,
Must spread out their wings untiring,
And never rest in their flight,
Till they come where your sad, sad heart is,
And sing to you in the night,
Beyond where the waters are moving,
Storm-darken’d or starry bright. – William Butler Yeats, Where My Books Go

Thoughts about reading, writing and books from author Pat Conroy who died March 4, 2016 at age 70; his books include The Water is Wide, The Great Santini, Prince of Tides and Beach Music:

I would love to see young writers come out of college and know there is a possibility to be a novelist.

Thoughts about reading and writing from Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird and Comes a Watchmen, who died February 19, 2016 at the age of 89:

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.

Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself…. It’s a self-exploratory operation that is endless. An exorcism of not necessarily his demon, but of his divine discontent.

To celebrate Valentine’s Day, here are quotes about love from some of our favorite authors:

I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun. – Jane Austen

If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. If they don’t, they never were. – Kahlil Gibran

Never close your lips to those whom you have already opened your heart. – Charles Dickens

You don’t love because: you love despite; not for the virtues, but despite the faults. – William Faulkner

The very essence of romance is uncertainty. – Oscar Wilde

Love is the answer to everything. It’s the only reason to do anything. If you don’t write stories you love, you’ll never make it. If you don’t write stories that other people love, you’ll never make it. – Ray Bradbury

Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies. – Jane Austen

I have an affection for a great city. I feel safe in the neighborhood of man, and enjoy the sweet security of city streets. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I spent a lot of winters in my childhood flying kites with my brother, with my cousins, with friends in the neighborhood. It’s what we did in the winter. Schools close down. There was not much to do. – Khaled Hosseini

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people. – G.K. Chesterton

Age appears best in four things: old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust and old authors to read. ― Francis Bacon

I love everything that is old; old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wines. ― Oliver Goldsmith

Give me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather and a little music played out of doors by somebody I do not know. ― John Keats

“Wine is one of the most civilized things in the world and one of the most natural things of the world that has been brought to the greatest perfection, and it offers a greater range for enjoyment and appreciation than, possibly, any other purely sensory thing. ― Ernest Hemingway

Accept what life offers you and try to drink from every cup. All wines should be tasted; some should only be sipped, but with others, drink the whole bottle. ― Paulo Coelho

I grabbed a pile of dust, and holding it up, foolishly asked for as many birthdays as the grains of dust, I forgot to ask that they be years of youth. — Ovid

With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come. – William Shakespeare

God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well. — Voltaire

The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been. – Madeleine L’Engle

Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you! — Dr. Seuss

Famous authors on books and bottles:

Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse – and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness –
And Wilderness is Paradise enow. — Omar Khayyám

Read as you taste fruit or savor wine, or enjoy friendship, love or life. – George Herbert

I love everything that’s old, — old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine. – Oliver Goldsmith

Give me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather and a little music played out of doors by somebody I do not know. — John Keats

Wine is one of the most civilized things in the world and one of the most natural things of the world that has been brought to the greatest perfection, and it offers a greater range for enjoyment and appreciation than, possibly, any other purely sensory thing. – Ernest Hemingway

Close friends contribute to our personal growth. They also contribute to our personal pleasure, making the music sound sweeter, the wine taste richer, the laughter ring louder because they are there. – Judith Viorst

A bottle of wine begs to be shared; I have never met a miserly wine lover. – Clifton Fadiman

The legacy of heroes is the memory of a great name and the inheritance of a great example.—Benjamin Disraeli

We who are left how shall we look again
Happily on the sun or feel the rain
Without remembering how they who went
Ungrudginly and spent
Their lives for us loved, too, the sun and rain? – Wilfred Wilson Gibson

Your silent tents of green
We deck with fragrant flowers;
Yours has the suffering been,
The memory shall be ours. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I deliberately did not read anything about the Vietnam War because I felt the politics of the war eclipsed what happened to the veterans. The politics were irrelevant to what this memorial was. – Maya Lin

Authors like cats because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures, and cats like authors for the same reasons. – Robertson Davies

I write every day. I’m always in the process of writing my last book, until the next one. – Farley Mowat
A writer uses a pen instead of a scalpel or blow torch. – Michael Ondaatje
The eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them: there ought to be as many for love. – Margaret Atwood

Let the beauty of what you love be what you do. – Rumi

Grown men can learn from very little children for the hearts of little children are pure. Therefore, the Great Spirit may show to them many things which older people miss. – Black Elk

I love you when you bow in your mosque, kneel in your temple, pray in your church. For you and I are sons of one religion, and it is the spirit. – Kahlil Gibran

You change your life by changing your heart. – Max Lucado

Life is God’s novel. Let Him write it. – Isaac Bashevis Singer

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read on the train. – Oscar Wilde

There are no strangers here, only friends that have not yet met. — William Butler Yeats

Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch
which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations. — George Bernard Shaw

Books, the children of the brain. – Jonathan Swift

It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade. – Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

All in the wild March-morning I heard the angels call,–
It was when the moon was setting, and the dark was over all;
The trees began to whisper, and the wind began to roll,
And in the wild March-morning I heard them call my soul. – Lord Alfred Tennyson

Our life is March weather, savage and serene in one hour. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty. – William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale

In a democracy, someone who fails to get elected to office can always console himself with the thought that there was something not quite fair about it. – Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War

The ballot is stronger than the bullet. – Abraham Lincoln

When widely followed public figures feel free to say anything, without any fact-checking, it becomes impossible for a democracy to think intelligently about big issues. – Thomas L. Friedman

And it was the afternoon of Halloween.
And all the houses shut against a cool wind.
And the town was full of cold sunlight.
But suddenly, the day was gone.
Night came out from under each tree and spread. – Ray Bradbury, The Halloween Tree

What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other’s folly – that is the first law of nature. — Voltaire

My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. – Desmond Tutu

Humanity’s legacy of stories and storytelling is the most precious we have. All wisdom is in our stories and songs. A story is how we construct our experiences. At the very simplest, it can be: ‘He/she was born, lived, died.’ Probably that is the template of our stories – a beginning, middle, and end. This structure is in our minds. – Doris Lessing