I can get myself awfully worked up, just as a fine sentence or paragraph can send me into shivery rapture. – Steve Almond, “Night of the Living Freak,” Candyfreak: A Journey through the Cho

All quotation dictionaries stand on the shoulders of their predecessors, which must be consulted as part of the effort to make sure that no famous quotations are missed. – Fred R. Shapiro, The Yale Book of Quotations, 2006 (Acknowledgements)

[B]ut in literature, it should be remembered, a thing always becomes his at last who says it best, and thus makes it his own. – James Russell Lowell