“It’s really a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.” This renowned entry from Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl captures the extraordinary resilience that illuminates her […]

“I was born a crime.” With this shocking declaration, Trevor Noah opens his bestselling memoir, Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood, immediately plunging us into the absurd and brutal realities of life under apartheid. Noah’s very existence as the child of a Black Xhosa mother and a white Swiss-German father was illegal

“As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.” This iconic line from John Green’s bestselling novel, The Fault in Our Stars, captures the tender, consuming, and heartbreaking romance that blossoms against the harsh backdrop of terminal illness. Sixteen-year-old Hazel Grace Lancaster, tethered to an oxygen

“What’s the point of having a voice if you’re gonna be silent in those moments you shouldn’t be?” This burning question from Angie Thomas’s award-winning 2017 novel, The Hate U Give, encapsulates the courageous and transformative journey of its protagonist, Starr Carter, after she witnesses the fatal police shooting of her unarmed best friend, Khalil.

What is the true weight of war—the rifle, the rucksack, or the unshakeable burden of memory and the stories soldiers tell to survive? Tim O’Brien’s groundbreaking The Things They Carried delves into this profound question with unflinching honesty. This 1990 collection of interconnected short stories, a masterful blend of fiction and memoir, immerses us in

Can a childhood of poverty, neglect, and relentless chaos forge an unbreakable spirit of resilience? Jeannette Walls’s bestselling 2005 memoir, The Glass Castle, answers with a resounding, although complex, yes, chronicling her nomadic upbringing by brilliant yet deeply flawed parents. We’ve collected 44 The Glass Castle quotes with page numbers (the Scribner paperback reprint edition,