Joanne G.

“Most people live in fear of some terrible event changing their lives, the death of a loved one or a serious illness. For the chronically ill, this terrible event has already happened, and we have been let in on an amazing secret: You survive. You adapt, and your life changes, but in the end you go on, with whatever compromises you have been forced to make, whatever losses you have been forced to endure. You learn to balance your fears with the simple truth that you must go on living.”
― Jamie Weisman, As I Live and Breathe: Notes of a Patient-Doctor

“You know what I think?" she says. "That people's memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive.”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.”
― Louis L'Amour, Matagorda/The First Fast Draw: Two Novels in One Volume

“I began to sense faintly that secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy . . . censorship. When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, “This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,” the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything—you can’t conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Revolt in 2100