A friend tagged me on Facebook and asked my top ten books in addition to a favorite quote. I took the liberty of doing thirteen, because I couldn’t decide. I also just picked a quote I liked, but not necessarily my favorite, because many of these had multiple quotes I absolutely love and connect quite closely to (especially Sylvia Plath, Arundhati Roy, Paulo Freire, and Nelson Mandela).
1. 
The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
“Impelled by feelings that were primal yet paradoxically wholly impersonal. Feelings of contempt born of inchoate, unacknowledged fear- civilization’s fear of nature, men’s fear of women, power’s fear of powerlessness. Man’s subliminal urge to destroy what he could neither subdue nor deify.”
Note: I could have quoted this whole book, so take the “favorite quote” with very many grains of salt.
2. 
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
“I do not think, sir, you have any right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience.”
3. 
Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.”
4. 
Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire
“For apart from inquiry, apart from the praxis, individuals cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.”
Note: Could have also quoted all of Freire.
5. 
The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
“The death of something living is the price of our own survival, and we pay it again and again. We have no choice. It is the one solemn promise every life on earth is born and bound to keep.”
6. 
Push, Sapphire
“Listen, baby, Muver love you. Muver not dumb. Listen baby:
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Thas the alphabet. Twenty-six letters in all. Them letters make up words. Them words everything.”
7. 
Le Petit Prince, Antoine St. Exupery
“‘People have forgotten this truth,’ the fox said. ‘But you mustn’t forget it. You become responsible forever for what you’ve tamed. You’re responsible for your rose.'”
8. 
Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes
“P.S. please if you get a chanse put some flowrs on Algernons grave in the bak yard.”
9. 
Grendel, John Gardner
“I know what’s in your mind. I know everything. That’s what makes me so sick and old and tired.”
10. 
Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
“…it was her habit to build up laughter of inadequate materials.”
11. 
Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela
“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”
12. 
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath / The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
“What is my life for and what am I going to do with it? I don’t know and I’m afraid. I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones, and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited. Yet I am not a cretin: lame, blind, and stupid.”
13. 
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
‘Did you eat something that didn’t agree with you?’ asked Bernard. The Savage nodded. ‘I ate civilization.'”
Traveler at the Edge 