Dale

“At the wheel of his slow car, Bob Arctor forgot theoretical matters and did a rerun of a moment that had impressed them all: the dainty and elegant straight girl in her turtleneck sweater and bell-bottoms and trippy boobs who wanted them to murder a great harmless bug that in fact did good by wiping out mosquitoes – and in a year in which an outbreak of encephalitis had been anticipated in Orange County – and when they saw what it was and explained, she had said words that became for them their parody evil-wall-motto, to be feared and despised:

IF I HAD KNOWN IT WAS HARMLESS
I WOULD HAVE KILLED IT MYSELF.

That had summed up to them (and still did) what they distrusted in their straight foes, assuming they had foes; anyhow, a person like well-educated-with-all-the-financial advantages Thelma Kornford became at once a foe by uttering that, from which they had run that day, pouring out of her apartment and back to their own littered pad, to her perplexity. The gulf between their world and hers had manifested itself, however much they’d meditated on how to ball her, and remained.”
― Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly

“And if you don’t know the story, you don’t know the man.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“Even though he knew this book as well as he knew his own backyard, he still loved every character, still loved every twist and turn of the plot, and after a day like this one, it felt amazingly wonderful to know exactly what was going to happen next.”
― Andrew Clements, The Losers Club

“Just because you’ve got anger management problems doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty to be ticked off about.”
― Gordon Korman, The Unteachables: A Hilarious Novel About a Class of Misfits and Mayhem for Children