"Interesting, but she could see that the boy didn't have a single lie in him. A very rare condition, especially for the male of the species."

"Every man engaged in war tells himself he can alter what has been written, that it is he, not God, who is the maker of destiny, free to change what is meant to be."

"The best way to die is when your living."

"He wanted pain, I saw that in him, and what a man wants he will often manage to find."

"Every time I finish a book, I forget everything I learned writing it - the information just disappears out of my head."

"My grief was cold. It was nothing to share. It was nothing to speak about, nothing to feel."

"The adults don't know what's happening on the kids' universe and the kids don't know what's happening on the adults' universe."

"Life was beautiful, everyone knew that, but it was also bitter and bleak and unfair as hell and where did that leave a person? On the outs with the rest of the world. Someone who sat alone in the cafeteria, reading, escaping from his hometown simply by turning the page."

"I saw this was the way of the future, to leave the past behind as if it were a dream."

"I do not know if he had a name, but I called him North, an appellation I think Beck would have approved of, for it was the name the Dutch called the Hudson River when they first came here, when men set to changing the world in their image, and gave all the wild things their own names."

"The stars are reflected from within the black water in the cistern. I find comfort in the omen I glean from this: light in the darkness, truth when it seems there is none."

"Still, she knows one thing for certain: never judge a relationship unless you are the one wrapped up in its arms."

"I've been a screenwriter for twenty-five years. Every one of my books have been optioned for movies and I have written a few of those screenplays."

"I once believed that life was a gift. I thought whatever I wanted I would someday possess. Is that greed, or only youth? Is it hope or stupidity? As far as I was concerned the future was a book I could write to suit myself, chapter after chapter of good fortune. All was right with the world, and my place in it was assured, or so I thought then. I had no idea that all stories unfold like white flowers, petal by petal, each in its own time and season, dependant on circumstances and fate."

"That just goes to show that you never can tell about a person by guessing," Frances informs her niece. "That's why language was invented. Otherwise, we'd all be like dogs, sniffing each other to find out where we stood."

"Eddie wondered if every criminal saw himself as the hero of his own story and if every thankless son was convinced he'd been mistreated by his father."

"He stepped off the pavement like a man jumping off a bridge, as calm as a swimmer with an ocean out below. Lucy had known what he was going to do the instant their eyes met. She'd know what he intended because she would have done the very same thing if she'd had his courage. Nothing was going to break his fall."

"The past was what we carried with us, threaded to the future, and we decided whether to keep it close or let it go."

"Although I am no longer caught in the past, the future seems like a ridiculous thing to me. Try to catch it, hold it in your hand. It disappears every time."

"Every problem has a solution, although it may not be the outcome that was originally hoped for or expected."

"I wrote Seventh Heaven for my mother who I miss eve."

"Unrequited love is so boring. Weeping under a blue-black sky is for suckers or maniacs."

"Early on Monday evening, when the sky was the color of a velvet ribbon falling over the hills."

"Here's the thing about luck...you don't know if it's good or bad until you have some perspective."

"Do people choose the art that inspires them - do they think it over, decide they might prefer the fabulous to the real? For me, it was those early readings of fairy tales that made me who I was as a reader and, later on, as a storyteller."

"I knew what happened in fairy tales. The strong survived while the weak were eaten alive."

"After a while, the characters I'm writing begin to feel real to me. That's when I know I'm heading in the right direction."

"I can't really work on more than one thing at a time."

"My mother was teaching me that the inside of something was not necessarily its outside. Always look carefully, she told me. Look with more than your eyes."

"Sometimes the right thing feels all wrong until it is over and done with."

"I always quit at three when my kids come home from school so I feel pretty spoiled."

"Your sorrow will become smaller, like a star in the daylight that you can't even see. It's there, shining, but there is also a vast expanse of blue sky."

"I don't really read as much as I used to. A lot of what I was looking for as an escape I find in writing. And the other thing is that I don't want to get into someone else's language when I'm working."

"We can offer women what they want most of all, cures for the most common ailments of this world... When children are ailing or babies refuse to be born, when men are unfaithful, when the sky is empty of rain, when the amulets buried beneath holy wall upon instructions of the minim offer not solace and all entreaties to the priests for guidance fail, when the rituals they offer bring no comfort and no consolation, they come to us."

"People expected certain things of me: assistance, silence, comfort. They had no idea who I was."

"Someone killed himself because of me once, Meredith said.People kill themselves because of what's inside of them, not because of other people."

"Among men and women, those in love do not always announce themselves with declarations and vows. But they are the ones who weep when you're gone. Who miss you every single night, especially when the sky is so deep and beautiful, and the ground so very cold."

"He had appeared beside her because she had wanted him to. She had called him to her, and was calling him still. Even when she fell asleep, she dreamed of water, as if the world were topsy-turvy and everything she cared about had been lost in the deep. She plunged through the green waves with her eyes wide open, searching for the world as she'd known it, but that world no longer existed; everything that had once been solid was liquid now, and the birds swam alongside the fish."

"Because we were Russian, sadness came naturally to us. But so did reading. In my family, a book was a life raft."

"Although she'd never believe it, those lines in Gillian's face are the most beautiful part about her. They reveal what she's gone through and what she's survived and who exactly she is, deep inside."

"But I was not a mouse. In the fields where I walked, I was much more interested in the actions of the hawks."

"Do you ever just put your arms out and just spin and spin and spin? Well, that's what love is like; everything inside of you tells you to stop before you fall, but for some reason you just keep going."

"The voice that arises out of the silence is something no one can imagine until it is heard. It roars when it speaks, it lies to you and convinces you, it steals from you and leaves you without a single word of comfort."

"They sealed this promise by hooking pinkies, the way they used to, long ago, when promises didn't hurt as much."

"Some things, when they change, never do return to the way they once were. Butterflies for instance, and women who've been in love with the wrong man too often."

"The most glorious hour in Manhattan was when twilight fell in sheets across the Great Lawn. Bands of blue turned darker by the moment as the last of the pale light filtered through the boughs of cherry trees and black locusts. In October, the meadows turned gold; the vines were twists of yellow and red."

"I knew what it was to yearn for a life so distant it seemed that it had never been anything more than a dream."

"I'm much faster now. When you only have a certain amount of time to write, after a while you learn to use your time well or you stop writing."

"Shut up and do not think. All the theorists agree: shut up and keep the words from being said. And all of the scars will remain invisible, and all of the scars will remain under the skin. Where they belong."

"I only have one story now.The story was heroin. It was made out of sensation, not words; it was invisible and murderous and unstoppable. Sam disappeared from her slowly, like a snowman melting, until all Blanca had left of him was a pool of freezing-cold blue water, arctic cold, sorrow colored, evaporating with every year. She did her best to hold onto him, but it was impossible, like carrying ice into the desert or making time stand still. After the final fight when Sam moved out, Blanca saw him less and less often. He no longer had a presence; he was like the outline of a person, an absence rather than a full-fledged human being."