All true readers have a book, a moment when real life is never going to be able to compete with fiction again.

You make a life out of what you have, not what you're missing.

A girl expecting rescue never learns to save herself. Even with the means, she will find her courage wanting.

Memory is a cruel mistress with whom we all must learn to dance.

It's a terrible thing, isn't it, the way we throw people away?

Reluctance to begin is quick to befriend procrastination. . . .

In each man's heart there lies a hole. A dark abyss of need, the filling of which takes precedence over all else.

His words had tossed the book that was her life into the air and the pages had been blown into disarray, could never be put back together to tell the same story.

It was such a pleasure to sink one's hands into the warm earth, to feel at one's fingertips the possibilities of the new season.

There's a market for mysteries for adults. That feeling of opening a book and delving inside and not coming out until you've closed the book.

But history is a faithless teller whose cruel recourse to hindsight makes fools of its actors.

She held up the pen and gave him a lazy grin. "It's a rose."He came close. "It's a pen." He tried to pluck it from her hand."You are seriously lacking in imagination.

I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.

For me, I try and be authentic in my choices and follow my instincts, and I think it's a valuable message for women in today's society to learn to love yourself.

Don't Just Do Something: Stand There. Don't Just Stand There: Do Something.

Custom is the most certain mistress of language, as the public stamp makes the current money.

What believer sees a disturbing omission or infelicity? The text, whether of prophet or of poet, expands for whatever we can put into it, and even his bad grammar is sublime.

Passion is born deaf and dumb.

Don't carry logs into the forest.

The American system of political spending is so unregulated that it might make Adam Smith rethink free markets.

A righteous man hates lying, But a wicked man is loathsome and comes to shame.