"I’ve seen how you can’t learn anything when you’re trying to look like the smartest person in the room."

"Listen. To live is to be marked. To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know. In perfect stillness, frankly, I've only found sorrow."

"God doesn’t need to punish us. He just grants us a long enough life to punish ourselves."

"But kids don't stay with you if you do it right. It's the one job where, the better you are, the more surely you won't be needed in the long run."

"Everything you're sure is right can be wrong in another place."

"Listen. Slide the weight from your shoulders and move forward. You are afraid you might forget, but you never will. You will forgive and remember."

"It was the sort of beauty you feel so deeply it becomes contagious and somehow makes you feel beautiful too."

"Still anyone who trusts a serpent deserves its bite. The wise see a creature for what it is, not what it says it may be."

"I must keep my head and not give in to desire, for desire is what causes women to drown."

"Even as a small child, I understood that woman had secrets, and that some of these were only to be told to daughters. In this way we were bound together for eternity."

"The best way to die is when your living"

"I can hurt myself more than anyone else can," she told her sister. "I can do it with my eyes closed."

"(Love) walks up to you,and when it does, you need to recognize it for what it is and, perhaps more important, for what it might become."

"We stood and watched as God abandoned us, and then we did the best we could."

"Outside, the September air was enticingly fragrant, yellow with pollen and rich, lemony sunlight."

"Some stories stayed with you even when you wanted to forget them."

"Those you love will not drown or burn. They will fly away.' ...'Now we both have people we love who are like birds. They have flown far from anything in this world that can hurt them. They're flying away still."

"What men yearn for they often destroy."

"You can never tell about a person by guessing...that's why language was invented. Otherwise, we'd all be like dogs, sniffing each other to find out where we stood."

"It's not the lie that's the problem; it's the distance the lie forges between you."

"Unfinished business always comes back to haunt you, and a man who swears he'll love you forever isn't finished with you until he's done."

"That is how you know you've left childhood behind-when you wish for time to go backward."

"Love is worth the sum of itself, and nothing more."

"She can feel his blood, just beneath his skin; when he breathes, the air fills with smoke. He's like a dragon, ancient and fearless."