"Think you only kings have power? Stand on a stage and hold the hearts of men in your hands. Make them laugh with a gesture, cry with a word. Make them love you. And you will know what power is."

"They sat quietly together for a few minutes, Joe holding Fiona's hand, Fiona sniffling. No flowery words, no platitudes passed between them. Joe would have done anything to ease her suffering, but he knew nothing he might do, or say, could. Her grief would run its course, like a fever, and release her when it was spent. He would not shush her or tell her it was God's will and that her da was better off. That was rubbish and they both knew it. When something hurt as bad as this, you had to let it hurt. There were no shortcuts."

"I don't like hope very much. In fact, I hate it. It's the crystal meth of emotions. It hooks you fast and kills you hard. It's bad news. The worst. It's sharp sticks and cherry bombs. When hope shows up, it's only a matter of time until someone gets hurt."

"I grew up on a mixed diet of mass and class, and I still read that way. I hate it when people apologize for what they read. Some bestsellers aren't exactly literary. So what? They're fun and rip-roaring, Who instituted the book police and why do we have to answer them? Grrrrr!"

"And I knew in my bones that Emily Dickinson wouldn't have written even one poem if she'd had two howling babies, a husband bent on jamming another one into her, a house to run, a garden to tend, three cows to milk, twenty chickens to feed, and four hired hands to cook for. I knew then why they didn't marry. Emily and Jane and Louisa. I knew and it scared me. I also knew what being lonely was and I didn't want to be lonely my whole life. I didn't want to give up on my words. I didn't want to choose one over the other. Mark Twain didn't have to. Charles Dickens didn't."

"The truth costs.Lies cost more."

"When you can write music that endures, bravo. Until then, keep quiet and study the work of those who can."

"Sir, no amount of money, no matter how vast, could induce me to stroll, perambulate, promenade, or engage in any form of locomotion with you whatsoever. Good evening."

"Who knew that listening to a guy sleep could be so much deeper than sleeping with a guy."

"Well, it seems to me that there are books that tell stories, and then there are books that tell truths... The first kind, they show you life like you want it to be. With villains getting what they deserve and the hero seeing what a fool he's been and marrying the heroine and happy endings and all that... But the second kind, they show you life more like it is... The first kind makes you cheerful and contented, but the second kind shakes you up."

"DNA tells you all the secrets of life,' he used to say. Except for one-how to live it."

"I'd wish you good luck, but you won't need it. You get to write your own story now. Nothing's luckier than that."

"History is a Rorschach test, people. What you see when you look at it tells you as much about yourself as it does about the past."

"We all make mistakes, the danger lies in letting those mistakes make us. Make us believe we can't put things right. Make us think there's no hope. Make us give up."

"It has an L on it. L for love. See? It's the key to the universe, Dad. You said you were looking for it. You told Mom you were. I found it for you so you don't have to look anymore. So you can come home at night."

"Happiness was useless to me. It was heartache that filled my purse. What happy man has need of Shakespeare?"

"No. I meant stay with me today. And tomorrow. And every day after."

"Life, Rose well knew, could throw some hard punches at you, but nothing hurt as much as losing a child, or seeing one of your children hurt and suffering. Becoming a parent changed you forever, as nothing else could. Not good or bad fortune. Not friendships. Not even a man or a woman."

"The more obscure our tastes, the greater the proof of our genius."

"But you are a different sort of girl. Not at all what I expected you to be. And this is a different sort of time. And so I am hopeful for all the things you may yet find."

"Because just for a few seconds, someone else hurts, too. For just a few seconds, I'm not alone."

"Hope is the crystal meth of emotions. It hooks you fast and kills you hard."

"Because beautiful things never last. Not roses nor snow And not fireworks, either."

"There were times when I lifted my face to the sky, stretched my arms wide to the winter night, and laughed out loud, so happy was I.The memory of it makes me laugh now, but not from happiness.Be careful what you show the world.You never know when the wolf is watching."

"I listened as the words became sentences and the sentences became pages and the pages became feelings and voices and places and people."

"Namaste. It was a Nepalese greeting. It meant: The light within me bows to the light within you."

"Only the hopeless love God."

"She's got a big belt around her hips. It has a shiny buckle with PRADA on it, which is Italian for insecure."

"I need a boy who thinks with his big head, not his little one. Since they do not exist, I have fashioned my own."

"I will go out again this very night with my rockets and fuses. I will blow them straight out of their comfortable beds. Blow the rooftops off their houses. Blow the black, wretched night to bits. I will not stop. For mad I may be, but I will never be convenient."

"The thing is, you can't ever really know how rotten someone will turn out to be."

"What I saw next stopped me dead in my tracks. Books. Not just one or two dozen, but hundreds of them. In crates. In piles on the floor. In bookcases that stretched from floor to ceiling and lined the entire room. I turned around and around in a slow circle, feeling as if I'd just stumbled into Ali Baba's cave. I was breathless, close to tears, and positively dizzy with greed."

"He's wearing boots, a kilt, and a long-sleeve tee. No coat, even though it's December. Beautiful people don't need coats. They've got their auras to keep them warm."

"One expects decent people to stand up for the good of all. Decent people shut their doors and hide behind them as decent people do. Massacres could never happen if it weren't for decent people."

"I play until my fingers are blue and stiff from the cold, and then I keep on playing. Until I'm lost in the music. Until I am the music-notes and chords, the melody and harmony. It hurts, but it's okay because when I'm the music, I'm not me. Not sad. Not afraid. Not desperate. Not guilty."

"You fear you will fail at the very thing you were born for. And your fear torments you...instead of shunning your fear, you must let it speak and listen carefully to what it's trying to tell you. It will give you good counsel."

"I'm safer with the Tailor and Pretty Will and every thief and cutthroat in the bend than I am with Miss Josephine Montfort of Gramecy Park."

"History is fiction."

"Ambition and poverty are powerful motivators..."

"I could almost hear the characters inside, murmuring and jostling, impatient for me to open the cover and let them out."

"Headstrong is just a word, Katie - a word others call you when you don't do what they want."

"Sometimes you have to do wrong to do right."

"Keep being the author of your own story. Never let anyone else write it for you again."

"Because in a small dark room, a broken child lies on a filthy bed and stares up at a high window. He waits for me, too.And I-I who have failed at everything and have failed everyone-I must not, I cannot, I will not fail him."

"And besides, I couldn't stay at the party. It was too dangerous. I nearly died.''From what?''Boredom."

"Had you but seen it, I promise you, your high-minded principles would have melted like candle wax. Never would you have wished such beauty away."

"Becuse God loves us, but the devil takes an interest."

"An escape can become escapism before we even know it. Books are wonderful things, but you can't live in someone else's story. You have to live your own story."

"I'm wishing he could see that music lives. Forever. That it's stronger than death. Stronger than time. And that its strength holds you together when nothing else can."

"Voice is not just the sound that comes from your throat, but the feelings that come from your words."