Kleinzeit went into the living-room rubbing his hands and chuckling, lit the candle, stripped the flimsy Ryman bag from the yellow paper. The yellow paper lay before him naked. Yes yes oh yes, it murmured. Never like this before, no one like you before. Yes yes oh yes. Now now now.

Plenty of time, said Kleinzeit. No hurry.
‘Kleinzeit’ by Russell Hoban (1974) p 106.

I thought I had entered into a secret understanding with life to spare me the worst 
Saul Bellow "Herzog"

It is only worth fixing your gaze more attentively on the present, and then suddenly the future will arrive on its own
Nikolaj Gogol

There is no such thing as throwing something “away”
The Green Party

A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit
Tennyson

What do they know of heaven or hell, Cathy, who know nothing of life?
Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte

Franny lit a cigarette. "I'm marvellous now. I just never felt so fantastically rocky in my entire life. Did you order?"
Franny and Zooey, J D Salinger

She was beginning to plaster it on, he thought, like all of them. All but one. One pale one...

Look out: down: at an angle across the square to the opposite corner where the cab stopped. Look, it's still waiting. Run to it. Run for your life.

What he was saying, simply, taken off his guard, was that he had married the wrong sister.

And then...And then began the end that had been waiting in the beginning.
all Rosamund Lehmann, The Echoing Grove

Food! Food! Why did the stomach have a longer memory than the mind? Scarlett could banish heartbreak but not hunger, and each morning as she lay half-asleep, before memory brought back to her mind war and hunger, she curled drowsily expecting the sweet smells of bacon frying and rolls baking. And each morning she sniffed so hard to really smell the food she woke herself up.
Margaret Mitchell, Gone With The Wind, 1936 p420

Lord Finchley tried to mend the Electric Light
Himself. It struck him dead: And serve him right!
It is the business of the wealthy man
To give employment to the artisan.
Hilaire Belloc

To spend our days betting on three-legged horses with beautiful names.
Bohumil Hrabal

Yesterday,
I lost my blue unicorn.
It may seem
like an obsession,
yet I have
but one blue unicorn.
And even if I had two
he's the one I love.
I'll pay handsomely
for any lead.
For yesterday,
I lost my blue unicorn.
And now
he's gone.
From the song "Unicornio" by Silvio Rodriguez

She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain.
Louisa May Alcott

Even amidst fierce flames
The golden lotus can be planted
From Sylvia Plath’s grave

Always keep Ithaca in your mind.
To arrive is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry your voyage at all.
It is better to let it last for many years; and to anchor at the island when you are old, rich with all that you have gained on the way, not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches, Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.
Without her you never would have set out on the road.
She has nothing more to give you.
From Ithaca by Constantine Cavafy
translated by Rae Dalvern