Note: These are quotes I pulled in order of special bookmarks I randomly slipped into whatever books on my shelf felt right. Any and all names, dates, facts, etc. are purely coincidental (or maybe not! Lol). Love. Empower.

Jane Eyre:
“My bride is here,” he said, again drawing me to him, “because my equal is here, and my likeness. Jane, will you marry me?”
Still I did not answer, and still I writhed myself from his grasp: for I was still incredulous. (Pg. 307)

Random Family:
A guard escorted her to SHU. There, she vacillated between her choices: opting out or acting out. She wanted to escape, and she wanted to be noticed. Sadness was like falling; sleep was temporary; rage let her feel alive. She slept , then demanded to be screened for bipolar disorder, the diagnosis a doctor had given Robert following one of his suicide attempts. She sought oblivion through medication, which prison medics liberally provided–Naprosyn, Flerexil, Dolobid–and then fought against it. “They think I need to be kept in the fucking dark,” she said resentfully. Imagining her reunion with Serena got her through the worst stretches, with a little help from the voices of the other isolated women on SHU harmonizing to old R&B. The songs lulled her to sleep. (Pg. 240)

The Halloween Tree:
The soldier’s armor melted, dripped, changed. They were dressed now in the garments of priests who sang Latin before yet newer altars, even as Moundshroud, crouched, squinting, weighed the scene, and whispered it to his small masked friends:
“Aye, boys, see? Gods following gods. The Romans cut the Druids, their oaks, their God of the Dead, bang! down! And put in their own gods, eh? Now the Christians run and cut the Romans down! New altars, boys, new incense, new names…”
The wind blew the altar candles out. (Pg. 79)

War and Peace:
The war was heating up, and its theater was approaching the borders of Russia. Everywhere curses were heard on the enemy of the human race Bonapartius; militia and recruits were being gathered from the villages, and divergent news kept coming from the theater of the war, false as usual and therefore reinterpreted in various ways.
The life of old Prince Bolkonsky, Prince Andrei, and Princess Marya had changed much since 1805. (369)

The Enchantress of Florence:
However, the uprising was no joke. The mountain routes had become well-nigh impassable. And not long after Birbal arrived in the region to teach the Illuminati a lesson he was ambushed in the Malandrai Pass. There were malicious stories stories afterwards, about how the great minister tried to save his own skin by running away from his troops, but the rumors the emperor believed spoke of betrayal. He suspected that the Crown Prince had somehow been involved but was never able to prove it. (315)

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Next:
Figuerola hurried after her, but when she got to the corner, the woman had vanished without a trace. Figuerola stopped short in consternation. Shit. She walked slowly past the entrances to the buildings. Then she caught sight of a brass plate that read MILTON SECURITY.
Figuerola walked back to Bellmansgatan.
She drove to Götgatan, where the offices of Millennium were, and spent the next half hour walking around the streets in the area. She did not see Mårtensson’s car. At lunchtime she returned to police headquarters in Kungsholmen and spent two hours thinking as she pumped iron in the gym.

High School:
I briefly worried that Stephanie might be angry with me for interrupting, when Zoe snapped the fluorescent light off and found my face again in the dark. Twisting my hips, she pushed me down onto the floor and spread my knees, pressing her full weight into me. My head hit the porcelain toilet.
There was a knock at the door, and once again the light overhead was on. (186)

Despair:
It should be admitted that I exercise an exquisite control not only over myself but over my style of writing. How many novels I wrote when young-just like that, casually, and without the least intention of publishing them…I have exactly twenty-five kinds of handwritings…(80)

Crime and Punishment:
“But I rather wished to see Avdotya Romanovna once. A serious request. Well, good-bye…Ah, yes! See what I forgot! Tell your dear sister, Rodion Romanovich, that she is mentioned in Marfa Petrovna’s will for three thousand roubles. That is positively so. Marfa Petrovna made the arrangements a week before her death, and it was done in my presence. In two or three weeks Avdotya Romanovna will be able to have the money.”
“You’re telling the truth?”
“The truth. Tell her. Well, sir, I am at your service. I’m staying quite nearby, you see.” (308)

Anna Karenina:
After admiring that year’s young, which were exceptionally good–the early calves were as big as a peasant’s cow, Pava’s three-month-old daughter was the size of a yearling–Levin gave orders for a trough to be brought out and hay to be put in the racks. But it turned out that the racks, made in the autumn and left for winter in the unused pen, were broken. He sent for the carpenter, who by his order ought to have been working on the thresher. But it turned out that the carpenter was repairing the harrows, which ought to have been repaired before Lent. (154)

Human Acts:
Our bodies are piled on top of each other in the shape of a cross. (49)

Evicted:
There is a way we can rebalance these two freedoms: by significantly expanding our housing voucher program so that *all *low-income families could benefit from it. What we need most is a housing program for the unlucky majority–the millions of poor families struggling unassisted in the private market–that promotes the values most of us support: security, fairness, and equal opportunity. A universal housing voucher program would carve a middle path between the landlord’s desire to make a living and the tenant’s desire, simply, to live. (308)

Educated:
“What is this shit? I asked for a Milky Way.”
“You didn’t,” she said. “You said Snickers.”
“I want a Milky Way.”
Sadie left again and fetched the Milky Way. She handed it to him with a nervous laugh, and Shawn said, “Where’s my Snicker’s? What, you forgot again?”
“You didn’t want it!” She said, her eyes shining like glass. “I gave it to Charles!”
“Go, get it.”
“I’ll buy you another.”
“No,” Shawn said, his eyes cold. His baby teeth, which usually gave him an impish, playful appearance, now made him seem unpredictable, volatile. “I want that one. Get it, or don’t come back.”
A tear slid down Sadie’s cheek, smearing her mascara. She paused for a moment to wipe it away and pull up her smile. Then she walked over to Charles and, laughing as if it were nothing, asked if she could have the Snickers. He reached into his pocket and pulled it out, then watched her walk back to Shawn. Sadie placed the Snickers in his palm like a peace offering and waited, staring at the carpet. Shawn pulled her onto his lap and ate the bar in three bites.
“You have lovely eyes,” he said. “Just like the fish.” (161)

The Lost Years:
I will never forget the sight of Alison collapsing in tears on the kitchen floor and the feeling of helplessness that overwhelmed me. I had a strange sensation of living in a glass box then: I could see out and I knew things were happening all around me, but I couldn’t get out, and help couldn’t get in. It was as if I was suspended in time, observing the chaos around me.
I could no longer live this way. In trying to save one child, I was losing myself and all four of my children. (83)

Behind the Beautiful Forevers:
“…things–these women. All that and it reached such a level they made it a case.”