I'm an English major. Words, for me, hold an intrinsic beauty and power that cannot be paralleled in many other art forms. Below are 20 of my favorite quotes that have held a lasting impact on me, whether through their poetry or their meaning.

Why had he never appreciated what a miracle he was, brain and nerve and bounding heart?
JK Rowling, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows."

And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.
John Steinbeck, "East of Eden."

One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs, or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls.
Khaled Hosseini, "A Thousand Splendid Suns."

I am still so naive; I know pretty much what I like and dislike; but please, don't ask me who I am. Sylvia Plath, "The Journals of Sylvia Plath."

If this self of mine doesn't belong in this world, I'll be my own world, I'll be a world complete in myself. Indra Sinha, "Animal's People."

The world was reduced to the surface of her skin and her inner self was safe from all bitterness. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, "One Hundred Years of Solitude."

And men said that the blood of the stars flowed in her veins. C.S. Lewis, "The Silver Chair."

But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. Kurt Vonnegut, "Slaughterhouse Five."

How did we learn it, that talent for insatiability? Margaret Atwood, "The Handmaid's Tale."

Guided by my heritage of a love of beauty and a respect for strength -- in search of my mother's garden, I found my own. Alice Walker, "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens."

I have hated the words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right. Markus Zusak, "The Book Thief."

Once, I saw a bee drown in honey, and I understood. Nikos Kazantzakis, "Report to Greco."

My heart is lost; the beasts have eaten it. Charles Baudelaire, "Les Fleures du Mal."

So, I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you. Paulo Coehlo, "The Alchemist."

How then does light return to the world after the eclipse of the sun? Miraculously. Frailly. Virginia Woolf, "The Waves."

On bad days I held onto the thinning rope. The rope was poetry. Jeanette Winterson, "Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal?"

I am a woman built upon the wreckage of myself. Chris Cleave, "Incendiary."

And in the end, we were all just humans drunk on the idea that love, only love, could heal our brokenness. F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Great Gatsby."

We wear clothes, and speak, and create civilizations, and believe we are more than wolves. But inside us there is a word we cannot pronounce and that is who we are. Anthony Marra, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena."

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable. Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself."