2013 Goodreads Reading Challenge

January last year I joined a reading challenge via Goodreads and successfully finished my goal. This year I aim for 5 more books for the challenge. Below are the books I read and my favorite quotes from the books. Yes, I know most of it are under 'Young Adult' genre. Well, my daughter and I share the same bookshelf.

"We accept the love we think we deserve." -- Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

"Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud."  -- Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“For she had embodied the Great Perhaps--she had proved to me that it was worth it to leave behind my minor life for grander maybes, and now she was gone and with her my faith in perhaps.”  -- John Green, Looking for Alaska

“Becoming fearless isn't the point. That's impossible. It's learning how to control your fear, and how to be free from it.” -- Veronica Roth, Divergent

“Cruelty does not make a person dishonest, the same way bravery does not make a person kind.”    --  Veronica Roth, Insurgent

“It is a strange world," I murmured, more to myself than to the native soul.

"The strangest," he agreed.”   -- Stephanie Meyer, The Host

“There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that’s what everyone else does.”   --  John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they’ll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back.”   --  John Green, An Abundance of Katherines

“When you are measuring life, you are not living it.”    --  Mitch Albom, The Time Keeper

“There are five people you meet in heaven. Each of us was in your life for a reason. You may not have known the reason at the time, and that is what heaven is for. For understanding your life on earth. This is the greatest gift God can give you: to understand what happened in your life. To have it explained. It is the peace you have been searching for.”    --  Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

“When someone is in your heart, they're never truly gone. They can come back to you, even at unlikely times.”    -- Mitch Albom, For One More Day

“Faith is about doing. You are how you act, not just how you believe.”    --  Mitch Albom, Have a Little Faith: A True Story

“The mistake ninety-nine percent of humanity made, as far as Fats could see, was being ashamed of what they were; lying about it, trying to be somebody else.”    ---  J. K. Rowling, The Casual Vacancy

“Eventual, as Pug used to say. When he wanted to say something was really good, he's never say it was awesome, like most people do; he'd say it was eventual. How funny is that? The old Pugmeister. ”   --   Stephen King, Everything's Eventual

“Brave enough to be quiet when quiet was called for, brave enough to observe before flinging myself into something, brave enough to not abandon my true self when someone else wanted to seduce or force me in a direction I didn't want to go, brave enough to stand my ground quietly.”    --  Piper Kerman, Orange is the New Black

“How does one become a butterfly? They have to want to learn to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.”  --   Trina Paulus, Hope for the Flowers

“And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”   -- Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“I'll say it one last time: Be brave.”  --  Veronica Roth, Allegiant

“Happy Hunger Games! And may the odds be ever in your favor.”   -- Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games

“At some point, you have to stop running and turn around and face whoever wants you dead.The hard thing is finding the courage to do it.”  -- Suzanne Collins, Catching Fire