Sorry for the long wait… but rather late than never, right?! Here’s the top ten (I included just the title, author and a quote from the book):

Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster (written in 1912!)

“He and I always think the same things are funny, and that is such a lot; it’s dreadful when two people’s senses of humour are antagonistic. I don’t believe there’s any bridging that gulf!”

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

“I had neither the good sense nor the feeling to know that this was all my fault, and that if I had been easier with Joe, Joe would have been easier with me.”

Uncle by Ndebele

“Sometimes, when you do something you really like, something important, you want to be alone. It’s not that you don’t love people anymore, but because you want to prepare yourself to love them more and better. So you have to be alone.”

Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse

“She gave me her hand. I noticed for the first time how well it matched her voice – a beautiful hand, firm and intelligent and good-natured. She laughed at me when I kissed it.”

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl

“‘Whips!’ cried Veruca Salt. ‘What on earth do you use whips for?’
‘For whipping cream, of course,’ said Mr Wonka. ‘How can you whip cream without whips? Whipped cream isn’t whipped cream unless it’s been whipped by whips. Just as a poached egg isn’t a poached egg unless it’s been stolen from the woods in the dead of night!’”

Sophie Calle: Did you see me? by Christine Macel, Ive-Alan Bois, Yve-Alain Bois and Olivier Rolin (catalogue of French artist Sophie Calle’s projects)

“I live happy events and I exploit unhappiness”

Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel

“It hadn’t been easy to fit into the suitcase the day the three made their First Communion. The veil, the prayerbook, the photo taken outside the church all fit in pretty well, but not the taste of the tamales and atole Nacha had made, which they had eaten afterwards with their friends and families. The little apricot pits had gone in, but not their laughter when they played with them in the schoolyard, nor Jovita their teacher, the swing, the smell of her bedroom or of freshly whipped chocolate.”

Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters by J.D. Salinger

“I feel as though I’m about to be born”

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

“As it happens sometimes, a moment settles and hovered and remained for much more than a moment. And sound stopped and movement stopped for much, much more than a moment.

Then gradually time awakened and moved sluggishly on.”

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

“And Lot’s wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human.”

And that’s it (for now…)