So you know what mean when I say that I don’t think anyone who falls in love has a choice. You’re just pulled to that person like true north, whether it’s good for you or...

At seventeen, the smallest crises took on tremendous proportions; someone else’s thoughts could take root in the loam of your own mind; having someone accept you became as vital as oxygen. Adults, light years away...

The best way to prevent a heartache was to cushion the coming blow.

When a freedom is taken away from you, I suppose, you recognize it as a privilege, not a right.

A long time ago someone told me that a story will tell itself, when it’s ready.

Sometimes knowing what’s right isn’t a rational decision, or even what works on paper. Sometimes leaving is the best course of action after all.

The saddest day in the world will be the one when she stops pretending.

So much of the language of love was like that: you devoured someone with your eyes, you drank in the sight of him, you swallowed him whole. Love was substance, broken down and beating through...

Do you know how there are moments when the world moves so slowly you can feel your bones shifting, your mind tumbling? When you think that no matter what happens to you for the rest...

I was starting to see that what looks like garbage from one angle might be art from another. Maybe it did take a crisis to get to know yourself; maybe you needed to get whacked...

I have always envied people who believe strongly in religion, people who could face a tragedy by praying and know that it would be all right.

I always hated when my scars started to fade, because as long as I could still see them, I knew why I was hurting.

Babies don’t come with instruction booklets. You’d learn the same way we all do — you’d read up on dinosaurs, you’d Google backhoes and skidders. And you don’t need a penis to go buy a...

It was one thing to sacrifice your own life for someone else’s. It was another thing entirely to bring into the mix a third party – a third party who knew you, who trusted you...

Three months ago, if you asked me, I would have told you that if you really loved someone, you’d let them go. But now I look at you, and I dreamed about Maggie, and I...

What you didn’t tell someone was just as debilitating as what you did.

From that point of view, I realized that my hole was not miles deep after all. My father, in fact, could stand on the bottom and it only reached up to his chest.Darkness, you know,...

The Native Americans know that wolves are mirrors for humans. What they show us are our strengths and weaknesses… When I lived with the wolves, I was proud of the reflection of myself. But when...

I would prove to you that being different isn’t a death sentence but a call to arms.

McAfee, I could try this case in my sleep and still win.””Guess that’s your plan, then, since you’re clearly dreaming.

I suddenly remember being very little and being embraced by my father. I would try to put my arms around my father’s waist, hug him back. I could never reach the whole way around the...

There’s some illogical part of me that still believes if you want superman to show up, first there’s got to be someone worth saving.

Just because a person didn’t admit that something had changed didn’t mean it hadn’t happened.

You know someone’s right for you when the things they don’t have to say are even more important than the things they do.

A mathematical formula for happiness:Reality divided by Expectations.There were two ways to be happy:improve your reality or lower your expectations.

Would you give up your vengeance against someone you hate if it meant saving someone you love? Would you want your dreams to come true if it meant granting your enemy’s dying wish?

Edward: You know what the difference is between a dream and a goal? he used to say to me. A plan.

Memories aren’t stored in the heart or the head or even the soul, if you ask me, but in the spaces between any given two people.

Was that all it took to be brave? Knowing that someone believed in you?

She has never been a pretty crier. She sobbed the way she did everything else – with passion and excess. That she had managed to keep it inside her this long was astounding to James....

Was there a language of loss? Did everyone who suffered speak a different dialect?

Something still exists as long as there’s someone still around to remember it.

You can argue that it’s a different world now than the one when Matthew Shepard was killed, but there is a subtle difference between tolerance and acceptance. It’s the distance between moving into the cul-de-sac...

You have to understand – there is a romance to Africa. You can see a sunset and believe you have witnessed the hand of God. You watch the slow lope of a lioness and forget...

I love the idea that a name might change based on who you are at a given moment in time. Lia

Maybe mothers – consciously or subconsciously – repelled their daughters in different ways.

Being a parent wasn’t just about bearing a child. It was about bearing witness to its life.

Change is a funny thing. We never are quite sure what we are becoming or even why. Then one day we look at ourselves and wonder who we are and how we got that way....

I’m lonely. Why do you think I had to learn to act so independent? I also get mad too quickly, and I hog the covers, and my second toe is longer than my big one....

Love was that way. You could not render it in black or white. It always came down to the strange, blended shades of grey.

But love wasn’t about sacrifice, and it wasn’t about falling short of someone’s expectations. By definition, love made you better than good enough; it redefined perfection to include your traits, instead of excluding them. All...

Hope and reality lie in inverse proportions, inside the walls of a hospital… Doubt is like dye. Once is spreads into the fabric of excuses you’ve woven, you’ll never get rid of the stain.

It’s never fifty-fifty in a marriage. Someone falls in love first. Someone puts someone else up on a pedestal. Someone works hard to keep things rolling smoothly, someone else sails along for the ride. Someone...

There are so many ways a family can unravel. All it takes is a tiny slash of selfishness, a rip of greed, a puncture of bad luck. And yet, woven tightly, family can be the...

The only monsters I have ever known were men.

by now you’ve already formed your own impression. you believe that an act committed a lifetime ago defines a man, or you believe that a person’s past has nothing to do with his future. you...

And oh she had been broken. She hid it well, but Ross knew from personal experience that once you had put the pieces together, even though you might look intact, you were never quite the...

I felt a splinter of guilt wedge into my heart. Charlotte had hurt me; in return, I’d hurt Rob. Maybe that’s what we do to the people we love: take shots in the dark and...

but it seems to me that growing up means you stop hoping for the best, and start expecting the worst. So how do you tell an adult that maybe everything wrong in the world stems...

The bottom line is that we never fall for the person we’re supposed to.