Birth and death - what could be more monstrous than that? We like to deceive ourselves and call it wondrous and beautiful and majestic, but it's freakish, let's face it.

...the face has limited space. My mother used to say, if you fill your face with laughing, there will be no more room for crying.

Money can buy the necessary police order. Justice is sold to the highest bidder

Distance was a dangerous thing, she knew. Distance changed people.

Remembering bred its own peculiar sorrow. It seemed so unfair: that time should render both sadness and happiness into a source of pain.

People forget how vulnerable they are despite their shirts and shoes and briefcases, how this hungry and cruel world could strip them, put them in the same position as my beggars.

How starved they seemed for ordinary kindness

The return of solitude was not quite as Dina expected it to be. These many years I made a virtue of inescapable reality, she thought, calling it peace and quiet.

Did life treat everyone so wantonly, ripping the good things to pieces while letting bad things fester and grow like fungus

the secret of survival was to balance hope and despair

Where was the line between compassion and foolishness, kindness and weakness? And that was from her position. From theirs, it might be a line between mercy and cruelty, consideration and callousness.

There is only one thing in this world worse than dying and that’s watching someone you love die instead—you feel their pain with no final solace.

Why is your heart racing Tris?

When people get into their 30s plus "boyfriend" sounds weird...if you really think about it. Instead, I think we should universally start using the term "manfriend" or "snookie bookie cuddles pie".

If you consulted your business experiences instead of your ugly individualistic philosophy, you would know that believing in himself is one of the commonest signs of a rotter.

I was in three academic clubs, a huge book worm and the teacher's pet. I was kind of an easy target for bullies.

Rogue Squadron doesn’t run. Unless we really, really have to." "No, this will be Wraith Squadron’s mission." "We don’t mind running. Even when we don’t have to.

There is a single thread of attitude, a single direction of flow, that joins our present time to it's early burgeoning in Mediterranean civilization...

Only where there are graves are there resurrections.

Achieve order within yourself...an inward tranquility which knows no disturbance at any moment...in the daily life of the home and the office.

In temperance there is ever cleanliness and elegance.