Her silence should be feared more than her words.

Pain writes the words, sorrow wields the pen, tears wet the paper, and the story mends the heart.

It's the in-between, the sustenance, not just the gears and bolts that make a human. When you forget to find out how the person was built—the oil, chemistry, and the craft—you miss all the beauty.

The ending of your story all depends on the beginning of ours.

A disastrous flaw in our design is that the heart always defies the brain.

I watched him with wonder like the stars watch the moon, falling in love with every crescent, dark side, and dream.

Love alone means nothing unless you have a tortured heart for it to soothe.

Life is a lie. We should fear it more than death. We live fearful of dying, terrified of the unknown … when, really, every truth is in our last breath.

Sometimes I think my scars are beautiful, but then I remember not everyone shares the same love of art.

Whatever achievements and successes I've had didn't happen overnight. It is all a product of guidance, hard work, careful planning, and intense, passionate execution over many years. (p. 69)

Lying's wrong, but when the world spins backwards, a small wrong may be a big right.

...when they look at me, I so badly want to be who they see.

This fathering is a man's second chance at living.

We're on this planet for the briefest of moments in cosmic terms, and I want to spend that time thinking about what I consider the deepest questions.

I'm not sure I'm the only savant with high IQ or with an above average IQ. Again, it may just be that we don't know very many of the others.

You start with a darkness to move through but sometimes the darkness moves through you.

I speak to the broken halves of all our selves and tell them to embrace, loving the worst in us equally with the best.

The only compensation which war offers for its manifold mischiefs, is in the great personal qualities to which it gives scope and occasion.

Submission to poverty is the unpardonable sin against the body. Submission to unhappiness is the unpardonable sin against the spirit.