deborah47 - Thanks for opening up this subject. I, too,am interested in what people find to be significant in their reading. Here is one of my favorites from "The Secret Life of Bees" by Sue Monk Kidd:

"The first week at August's was a consolation, a pure relief. The world will give you that once in a while, a brief time out; the boxing bell rings and you go to your corner, where someone dabs mercy on your beat up life."

I have two favorite quotes about books from The Shadow of the Wind:

"Once, in my father's bookshop, I heard a regular customer say that few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart........"

and

"As I walked in the dark through the tunnels and tunnels of books, I could not help being overcome by a sense of sadness. I couldn't help thinking that if I, by pure chance, had found a whole universe in a single unknown book, buried in that endless necropolis, tens of thousands more would remain unexplored, forgotten forever. I felt myself surrounded by millions of abandoned pages, by worlds and souls without an owner sinking in an ocean of darkness, while the world that throbbed outside the library seemed to be losing its memory, day after day, unknowingly, feeling all the wiser the more it forgot."

To be perfect is to do your best, without shadow of deceit or cowardice, without self-justification or dissembling. It is to strive with an honest mind and a pure heart, and an eye single to the love of good. It is not to climb without falling, but each time you fall, to rise again and continue the journey, no matter how hard it may be, discounting the bruises and the pain, the grief and the hope deferred. It is to face the light with courage, and never to deny it. It requires all that a man has, to the height and breadth and depth of his soul, but it does not require more. Anne Perry in Come Armegeddon

It is too long to excerpt here, but the entire Chapter 56 in "Life of Pi," which begins, "I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent."

I have it marked, and refer to it from time to time. I found it very powerful and meaningful at a dark time in my life.

As for the Anne Perry quote, I think she would know something indeed about rising again to continue the journey--she was convicted of murder when she was a teenager, and served time. I often wonder how her past has influenced her writing.

kkay - I've often wondered that about Perry. What a tragic background. I've never actually read any of her books, but find it interesting that she writes murder mysteries.

I also love "Life of Pi" and have collected a couple of pages of quotes from that book. Three of my favorites:

"The individual soul touches upon the world soul like a well reaches for the water table."

Speaking about Christianity -- "It had a reputation for few gods and great violence. But good schools."

"The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart."

Words of wisdom from Anne Morrow Lindbergh: (1955)

"Security in a relationship lied neither in looking back to what it was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. For relationships, too, must be like islands. One must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits -- islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, continually visited and abandoned by the tides. One must accept the security of the winged life, of ebb and flow, of intermittency."

"Island living has been a lens through which to examine my own life in the North. I must keep my lens when I go back. Little by little, one's holiday tends to fade. I must remember to see with island eyes. The shells will remind me; they must be my island eyes."

(from " Gift from the Sea")

Anne Perry wrote Tathea and Come Armageddon, which are sci fi books rather than mysteries. They are nothing like any of her other books, although they do deal with the forces of good and evil. She has created a time that you feel you should be able to place but just can't quite do it. I found them really good, but I've never heard anyone else mention them.

I also was present at a reading she did at our local, much-lamented, sold-to-Borders, independent bookstore. She was very entertaining, and no one mentioned her past.

I like all those wonderful quotes, thanks.