1. “Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armour yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.” – Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones
2. “It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. This is in fact true. It’s called living.” – Terry Pratchett
3. “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.” – George R. R. Martin, A Storm of Swords (Jojen Reed)
4. “It is our choices that show who we truly are, far more than our abilities.” – Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter
5. It’s the questions we can’t answer that teach us the most. They teach us how to think. If you give a man an answer, all he gains is a little fact. But give him a question and he’ll look for his own answers. – Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man’s Fear
6. Children are dying That’s a succinct summary of humankind, I’d say. Who needs tomes and volumes of history? Children are dying. The injustices of the world hide in those three words. – Steven Erikson, Deadhouse Gates
7. “Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.” – Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
8. We love what we love. Reason does not enter into it. In many ways, unwise love is the truest love. Anyone can love a thing because. That’s as easy as putting a penny in your pocket. But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. That is rare and pure and perfect. – Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man’s Fear
9. It gets tiresome being spoken to as if you are a child, even if you happen to be one. Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind
10. History is a wheel, for the nature of man is fundamentally unchanging. What has happened before will perforce happen again. George R.R. Martin, A Feast for Crows
11. Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving. Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky
12. The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon. Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings
13. We die a little every day and by degrees were reborn into different men, older men in the same clothes, with the same scars. Mark Lawrence, King of Thorns
14. Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. – Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
15. I wish…I wish I were dead…
And what use would that be to anyone? J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
16. Bran thought about it. ‘Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid?’
‘That is the only time a man can be brave,’ his father told him.
– George R. R. Martin, A Game of Thrones
17. “Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.” – Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind
18. The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it. Terry Pratchett, Diggers
19. I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain. – Frank Herbert, Dune
20. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, its only a passing thing this shadow. Even darkness must pass. – J. R. R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings