City-on-fire Quote by Garth Risk Hallberg

“College had once been my greatest aspiration; it stood for everything my mother did not—intellectualism, feminism, freedom. But being kidnapped had given me plenty…

— Nenia Campbell

“She could not fail to observe that a life of academic distinction was singularly ill rewarded. She had no desire whatever to teach and…

— Agatha Christie

“Increasingly, during those classes, longings had seized me, foreign, torrential aches that overran my heart. I wanted to know things, to become someone.”

— Sue Monk Kidd

“She had never been to college, and I often wondered where her life would have led under different circumstances. She might have been a…

— T.J. Forrester

“In truth she is not a hard lady naturally, and the time has been when the sight of the venerable figure suing to her…

— Charles Dickens

“She had reached the age of seventeen, without having seen one amiable youth who could call forth her sensibility, without having inspired one real…

— Jane Austen

“She had devoted her life, in a practical and unimportant way, trying to prove that fear was evil because it promoted prejudice, that courage…

— Paul Scott

“She had always given too much of her life over to relationships, and they’d never quite worked out. Now she was simplifying her life…

— Jack Ketchum

“She was living in bad sociery; and, imaginary though it was, its influence affected her, for she was feeding heart and fancy on dangerous…

— Louisa May Alcott

“She wanted to surprise everyone by her dash and originality, but she could not help modeling herself on the last person she met, and…

— Edith Wharton

“It was only in the first few years that she felt herself screaming silently, at times, for a glimpse of human ability, a single…

— Ayn Rand

“There was, too, a reality to her new life that her old life had lacked, and she realized with a shock that she had…

— Robin McKinley