And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder. (The Great Gatsby)

If you don't like someone's story, write your own.

... It was a lie, of course, that it wouldn't hurt a bit. But since adults always said that when it was going to hurt, he could count on that statement as an accurate prediction of the future. Sometimes lies were more dependable than the truth. (Ender's Game)

I’ve always told myself stories, and as I got old enough to write them down, I wrote them down. My stories happen to me; I bump into them, like pieces of furniture; and they are clear and plain to me — like pieces of furniture; and they were clearer and plainer to me now than when I was a child, for which I am grateful... years later, and thousands of words later, of practice words and practice stories, the flicker of Story on those cave walls I more easily read because I myself throw fewer distracting shadows...

One of the first questions — after what do I eat for breakfast and what color is my typewriter — that I had seriously to consider as an author speaking to a reader came about at my first public-speaking gig, at my old prep school, Gould Academy, where I had been invited back as a graduate who seemed to be doing something interesting with her life. A sophomore boy, having been compelled to read Beauty, said grimly, "They’re always talking to us about themes and symbols. Do you put that stuff in?" The answer is no. I don’t put much of anything in consciously, except commas, and my copy-editor takes a lot of those out again. The stories are there; I am only sorry, every time, that I can’t do a better job by them.

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The man that I named The Giver passed along to the boy knowledge, history, memories, color, pain, laughter, love, and truth. Every time you place a book in the hands of a child, you do the same thing.
It is very risky.
But each time a child opens a book, he pushes open the gate that separates him from Elsewhere. It gives him choices. It gives him freedom.
Those are magnificent, wonderfully unsafe things.

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Real life is too contrived for fiction.

I used to like “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”
I liked the coming darkness,
The jingle of harness bells,
Breaking—and adding to—the stillness,
The gentle drift of the snow...

But today, the teacher told us what everything stood for.
The woods, the horse, the miles to go, the sleep—
They all have “hidden meanings.”

It’s grown so complicated now that,
Next time I drive by,
I don’t think I’ll bother to stop.
(After English Class)

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