You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write. 
(~Annie Proulx)

What the future held for her she didn't know. Of two things only she was certain. There would be children-her own or other people's-and there would be books. 

(~Alice Dalgliesh)

"When I Think of My Father"

It is akin to the guilt

the survivor feels at being

the one who

somehow someway

endured the accident that thieved

the lives of so many others.

That’s how it sometimes

feels when I think of my father.

Why can I give testimony

of this man’s unbroken worship

when so many others are

wrecked again and again

by the men who gave them

their legal names?

I have no answers. I simply limp

along a witness pulled

somehow someway

from the flames

by a flawed good man.

This is not only my story.

This is my song.

(~John Blase: The Beautiful Due Blog)

Even mourning takes practice: resisting the distractions that insulate us from facing up to the tragedy of the world in which we find ourselves, we need to teach our children to mourn for neighbors who bear the brunt of injustice, even though we grieve as those with hope (I Thess. 4:13). Sometimes in this fallen world the best thing we can do is teach our children how to be sad.

(~James K. A. Smith, You Are What You Love)

One comfort that I relish is a letter from a close friend. The surprise of the letter in the day's mail, the recognition of her handwriting on the envelope, the ritual of getting settled into my chair and reading and rereading her carefully chosen words.
(~Deborah Chappell)

People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned. 

(~Saul Bellow)

That's what literature is. It's the people who went before us, tapping out messages from the past, from beyond the grave, trying to tell us about life and death! Listen to them! 

(~Connie Willis)