Brooke was always my summer. She’ll always be my summer. And I had already made my choice a long time ago. Loving Brooke was what I was made to do.

A part of me will probably always be waitin’ for her. And even when I get to the end of this life and she’s not there, I think I’ll still just wait. It’s the cruel...

even one reader to whom the cheap little book with its double columns and the lurid daub on its cover had been a lifelong delight, who had read and reread it, who would notice, and...

Because I seeA rainstorm in JuneJust before the sunThe black of nightJust before the starsAnd, girl, I see your ghostJust before our dawn

The closer and more completely you can come to explaining what a work of art means, the less like art it seems.

Maybe everything really does just have an expiration date—one that you can’t see until she tells you she’s leaving, and then she’s gone.

with magic” because I wanted to escape from a reality that, by implication, I lacked the gumption to face.

Maybe we knew each other in another life. Or maybe we were just meant to find each other in this one.

Buying a book is not about obtaining a possession, but about securing a portal.

We’re all livin’ in the past…we’re really always eighty milliseconds behind life happenin’. …that’s how long it takes our brains to comprehend what’s already taken place right in front of our eyes. So, I guess...

Life didn’t go how I had planned, but I couldn’t have planned a better life. Somewhere in between the beginning and eternity, I fought the war that we all must fight–the journey that in taking,...

If you’ve ever read one of those articles that asks notable people to list their favorite books, you may have been impressed or daunted to see them pick Proust or Thomas Mann or James Joyce....

But kind of like when you move something on a wall after it’s been there for a long time, and its place is bright but everything around it is faded—that’s how I feel about her....

She was also a memory, the worst kind of memory–the kind that pulled you to your knees at just the sound of her name.

Tell me you’ve seen the world.Now, you’ve come back homeTell me you’ve carried me with you,That you’ve held me close.Tell me you’ve missed meOr that I’m not crazy for waiting causeOf all the butterflies that...

Do the children who prefer books set in the real, ordinary, workaday world ever read as obsessively as those who would much rather be transported into other worlds entirely?

I set my face toward the sun again, and I think about my old life—the one I feel as though I’ve abandoned somehow. It hurts to think of it that way. And even though I...

We spend so much of our passion on our first love. I’m not convinced that it—passion—is one of those things that you have an endless amount of—like happiness or sadness. I could be happy all...

Dreams would always end with you, and then mornings would steal you away with a cruelty that haunted my days.

Adventure,’ then, is what might otherwise be called hardship if it were attempted in a different spirit. Turning a difficult task or a perilous journey into an adventure is largely a matter of telling yourself...

The past is a very determined ghost, haunting every chance it gets.

Just remember, the single most important thing in this world is love. You find it, you fight for it.

She tries to wear her pain on the inside. She always has. It’s the trademark of the oldest sibling, I think.

If we weigh the significance of a book by the effect it has on its readers, then the great children’s books suddenly turn up very high on the list.

She always used to say that the past is a relentless parasite in its quest, feeding off of the senses, looking for anything that will trigger a memory–forever there to complicate the present, forever there...

More than every once in awhile,More than most dreams,More than just my heart,More than anything,More than you know,And more than I can say,I’ve loved you moreEvery passing day

I gave him a piece of my heart a long time ago, and once you give that away, I’ve learned you don’t so easily get it back.

Desire acts as a honey trap to the unwary male, luring him into unworthy and catastrophic enterprises. The beauty of the Narnian witches isn’t ancillary to their evil, but integral to it, one of the...

Big events, small, mundane moments of the day–it doesn’t matter; the past will find a way to squeeze into the present–if you let it.

Now, you and I both know that I’ll wait a lifetime for you – remember, Butterfly Weeds never give up – so take your time down there. And tonight, as you watch that big, orange...

Desperation will drive you to do things you know will never make you whole again and even to lose the very thing you’re desperate for.

Fire will burn any human body it touches, and starvation will waste it, but stories are not so predictable in their effects.

I just want you to know that I love you with everything I am—a million times a million and to the moon and back.

How does the story really go?Does she ever cross your mind?Does she ever steal your nights?Is she still a part of you?Do you ever wish she were still by your side?And what would you do?If...

Words are great, but even I can admit they have certain short-comings. No word can ever give justice to a smile from a man who never smiled or to an old woman who gives up...

because we all know that the books we’ve loved best are seldom the ones we esteem the most highly

Little girl, little boyIf love has a wayFill their fields with laughterAnd scatter the sun on their dayAnd if it should happen to rainMake their raindrops kissesStraight from heaven aboveThat touch their hands and facesAnd...

I’ll love you until the last petal falls, Jules.

The past isn’t always as beautiful as we paint it in our minds.

I can see how James or Greene might agree with this point of view: the former finds that the ugly old lamp no longer produces a genie when rubbed and the latter realizes he has...

I’ll save a spot for you on the hood of my truck.