I am learning that a life isn't real unless someone else knows its reality. And I want my life to be real.

Remember that at any given moment there are a thousand things you can love.

Life tells you to take the elevator, but love tells you to take the stairs.

Kindness connects to who you are, while niceness connects to how you want to be seen.

The older I get, the more I lose my ability to breathe.

A photograph it a souvenir of a memory. It is not a moment. It is the looking at the photograph that becomes the moment. Your own moment.

The words that matter always stay.

motif, n. You don’t love me as much as I love you. You don’t love me as much as I love you. You don’t love me as much as I love you.

It was a mistake," you said. But the cruel thing was, it felt like the mistake was mine, for trusting you.

You have to believe there are kisses and laughs and risks worth taking.

Things that matter are not easy. Feelings of happiness are easy. Happiness is not. Flirting is easy. Love is not. Saying you’re friends is easy. Being friends is not.

His gaze slid over me like a veil of fire. He could ignite my deepest desires with a single glance. I decided right then and there no more reading romance novels by candelight.

She supposed this was the real definition of a mother – a woman who willingly allows her heart to break over and over again for her children.

She’s my hero. Everything good and decent that I am is because of my mother.

'Twas but a dream, yet by my heart I knew, Which still was panting, part of it was true: Oh how I strove the rest to have believed; Ashamed and angry to be undeceived!

But it's also because of something personal. My mother and father met while playing chess, so I've always had a fondness for the game. If it weren't for chess, I might not be here.

Then I was playing the piano at eight, and that helps you learn about women because most of the people I was playing for were women.

When I write, I actually hear the characters speak. Almost like an actor - even though I'm not an actor at all - getting into their truth and to justify what they do.

Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

That's one of the central challenges we face - how to stay true to events and compress the fundamentals.

I sometimes find that in interviews you learn more about yourself than the person learned about you.