“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”

The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger

“Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.”

Little Women, Louisa May Alcott

“ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE is scrawled in blood red lettering on the side of the Chemical Bank near the corner of Eleventh and First and is in print large enough to be seen from the backseat of the cab as it lurches forward in the traffic leaving Wall Street and just as Timothy Price notices the words a bus pulls up, the advertisement for Les Miserables on its side blocking his view, but Price who is with Pierce & Pierce and twenty-six doesn’t seem to care because he tells the driver he will give him five dollars to turn up the radio, ‘Be My Baby’ on WYNN, and the driver, black, not American, does so.”

American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis

“Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.”

Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolfe

(i love this shite. it’s like getting to re-visit an old pal you forgot about.

holden: you precocious, over-thinker-at-a-young-age you. jo: you’ve always reminded me a bit of myself. patrick: you are one crazy motherf-er, and i love your new york-y, overdetailed rants. and clarissa: that so simple and seemingly content a life can be so suffocating both scares me and enthralls me – i forgot.

courtesy of styleist; full list of other such gems here. thanks to Alexis for passing along.)