Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Chapter II, The Pool of Tears

"Dear, dear! How queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on just as usual, I wonder if I've changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is 'Who in the world am I?' Ah, that's the great puzzle!"

Chapter VI, Pig & Pepper

" 'Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'
'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.
'I don't much care where-----' said Alice.
'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.
'-----so long as I get somewhere,' Alice added as an explanation.
'Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, 'if you only walk long enough.' "

Chapter IX, The Mock Turtle's Story

" 'Tut, tut, child!' said the Duchess. 'Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it.' "

Chapter IX, The Mock Turtle's Story

" 'It's a vegetable. It doesn't look like one, but it is.'

'I quite agree with you,' said the Duchess; 'and the moral of that is---'Be what you would seem to be;---or, if you'd like it put more simply---'Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.' "

Through the Looking-Glass

Chapter II, The Garden of Live Flowers

"The Queen propped her up against a tree, and said kindly, 'You may rest a little, now.'
Alice looked around her in great surprise. 'Why, I do believe we've been sitting under this tree the whole time! Everything's just as it was!'
'Of course it is,' said the Queen. 'What would you have it?'
'Well, in our country, said Alice, still panting a little, 'you'd generally get to somewhere else---if you ran very fast for a long time as we've been doing.'
'A slow sort of country!' said the Queen. 'Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!'"

Chapter IV, Tweedledee and Tweedledum

" 'The time has come,' the Walrus said,
'To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings.' "

Hanna's Daughters: A Novel of Three Generations by Marianne Fredriksson

"Once upon a time her mother had been as beautiful as the landscape here. Now she's falling apart. I'm trying to learn to accept it. About time, for I'm old, too, or soon will be."
(p.16)

" 'Times has changed, Hanna.'

Then Hanna said something that truly surprised John.
'Mm. I think I knows that. But it worries me. What am I supposed to believe in if all the old things is wrong?'
'You has to believe in yourself,' said Astrid, as if that were the simplest thing in the world."
(p.97)

"In my generation, we were obsessed with a longing for grand passion...love was a fact that couldn't be disputed. Woe betide the poor creature not afflicted. Added to that was yet another demand: perfect sexuality. Being in love for life, and constant orgasms."
(p.158-9)

"When people fail at love despite the overwhelming desire for it to last a lifetime, they think they have something wrong with them. Only now when every other marriage ends in divorce have people begun to understand that infatuation seldom grows into love, and that not even love can free a person from loneliness. And that sexual enjoyment does not make life meaningful."
(p.159)

"She and her generation based the welfare state on the conviction that justice was possible. And they brought up a generation of disappointed men and women, badly equipped for sorrow and pain, and quite unprepared for death."
(p.165)

" 'A free man's love is never secure.'...I knew nothing about love until I met you. If I had, I would have run away. I didn't really want it, this consuming submission that makes a man a slave. So this 'free man's' answer is that you had unlimited power over me. If you were sulky at breakfast, my day was sheer hell. When you were happy, I was drunk with my victory. If you were ever angry and scolded me, I deserved it. It's still your power over me I'm afraid of. But I can't live without you."
(p.169-70)

"I notice I have to be careful not to turn good memories from the past into the only truth. That's easy to do. It's probably a talent we've acquired in order to endure, this blessed ability to remember what was good and forget the bad. But a lot goes wrong if you build on such uncertain ground..."
(p.245)

"As she left, she whispered that she would pray for me, and I, who had no God to appeal to, was grateful."
(p.255)

"Many people think eyes say the most about a person. But I've never understood that. Gentle brown eyes lie just as well as blue."
(p.276)

"I suddenly remember an event some years ago. You were confused but hadn't entirely disappeared...You recognized me. Then Father fell ill and had to have an operation. I was alone in the house and went every day to see him in the hospital and then on to the nursing home where you were.

"Every day, he said, 'You don't have time to sit here. Go on now, see Mother.'

I said, 'Okay I'll go.'

He smiled and waved as I left.

"A week or two later he was discharged. I fetched him and drove him straight to you. When you caught sight of him, you flung your arms out like a bird about to fly away.

"You called out, 'Oh, there you are.' Then you turned to the girl pushing the wheelchair, and said, 'Things'll be all right now, you'll see.'

I remember being jealous."
(p.318)

Here On Earth by Alice Hoffman

"For all they know, this dog has been following the body of its mistress from the time she was first taken from the house. It may have been waiting in the alley beside the funeral parlor, pursuing the hearse down Route 22. This small creature is not at all confused about what it wants, unlike men and women, who have the ability to conceal their deepest desires. Men and women, after all, can hide their love away. Men don’t chase after cars. Women don’t throw themselves upon cement doorsteps, curled up in a heap, until somebody opens the door and finally lets them inside.

"Among men and women, those in love do not always announce themselves, with declarations and vows. But they are the ones who weep when you’re gone. Who miss you every single night, especially when the sky is so deep and beautiful and the ground so very cold. On this night, the Judge cries more quietly than it would ever seem possible for a man of his size. He keeps his face averted, buried against the dog’s fur. March doesn’t even realize he’s weeping, until a sob escapes. And that is how she finally knows that Bill Justice loved Judith. He loved her for thirty-five years, which for some people is as good as a lifetime. He loved her the way that no one else ever has, and yet, in spite of that, he’s only entitled to grieve privately, in the dark. At least he has a right to that, and March wouldn’t think of intruding…"
(p. 80-81)

"You build your world around someone, and then what happens when he disappears? Where do you go - into pieces, into atoms, into the arms of another man? You go shopping, you cook dinner, you work odd hours, you make love to someone else on June nights. But you’re not really there, you’re someplace else where there is blue sky and a road you don’t recognize. If you squint your eyes, you think you see him, in the shadows, beyond the trees. It’s only his spirit, that’s what’s there beneath the bed when you kiss your husband, when you send your daughter off to school. It’s in your coffee cup, your bathwater, your tears. Unfinished business always comes back to haunt you…"
(p. 133)

The Emperor's Babe by Bernardine Evaristo

"To form an attachment is to risk its loss...I have been looking for a simplex, quiet, fidelis girl..."
(p.16)

"Sometimes he curls his arms around me
at night as if I am the most precious
thing in his world, as if I am his soul
and without me he would be empty..."
(p.65)

"What would it be like to see him on top of me?
To have someone respect the Handle with Care
signs written all over my body, to look
into a sweating face that sought my pleasure
as much as it expressed its own."
(p.102)

"...my mind wandered inside itself, where it was happiest.
Was this the highlight of my day?
My week? My month? Was this my life?"
(p.114)

"'Who are you, Severus?'
'I am what I have to be.'"
(p.140)

"Always you ask who I am.
'What do you dream, carissima?'
your head heavy upon my breast.
'To be with you,' I quietly reply.
'To leave a whisper of myself in the world,
my ghost, a magna opera of words.'"
(p.159)

"'For ever is a myth.'
'I believe in for ever. I believe in dreams.
I believe in finding my soul partner,
a life of domestic bliss, then sailing off to Tranny Hades together.'"
(p.190)

"'Why did you like me?'...'I knew you would make my world larger.
It was small, inside and out,
I would discover more of myself through you'"
(p.220)

This novel is the story of a Sudanese daughter whose father sells her to her husband, Felix, a man three times her age and four times her size. At the time (circa 211 AD), Zuleika is only 11 years old. The novel is about her growing up...rather it raises the question of whether she does indeed develop. Even though Felix sends her to classes to become a proper Roman 'lady,' he only spends 3 months a year with her. He has a family of five sons with his mistress the rest of the year. While all her friends around her indulge in extramarital affairs, Zuleika withdraws into herself to seek personal growth...until an Emperor comes along whom she considers her Prince Charming. She expects him to miraculously rescue her in spite of his wife, his children, and her husband. The Miracle never happens. the Emperor dies, leaving her unprotected, and her husband, Felix, poisons her with arsenic.

• Why do girls in bildungsroman novels always expect a "Prince Charming"?
  
• Which is better? A lie that makes you happy or the truth that breaks your heart?
  
• Why are there so few Holden Caufields and so many Zuleika novels? Don't boys have growing up problems too?
  
• Why are we socialized to scrutinize female virtue so much more than male?
  

Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad

Both Kurtz and Marlow must face the darkness within themselves. What does it really mean to civilize? Who is really darker? The corrupt man who exploits other men in the name of progress, the man who imposes his beliefs on other men through fear, or the man who clings to primitive beliefs and behaviors?

Bound Feet & Western Dress: A Memoir by Pang-Mei Natasha Chang

“When I was in college I envied those Chinese who associated primarily among themselves, speaking Chinese to one another and hanging around in a large group. They always looked so comfortable. Whereas, whenever I was with other Chinese, I could not help but feel self-concious, concerned as we walked around campus that others would think we were foreigners, outsiders.

"At the same time I could not be with my Western friends and walk by a group of Chinese without wondering what they thought of me. Did they think that I had disdain for my own heritage? I had trouble with everyone. For example, if I walked into a Chinese restaurant and the waiter began speaking in Chinese to me immediately, I felt put upon. But, if he did not speak Chinese with me, I was equally disturbed.” (p. 133)