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)