I do have a sense of displacement as constant instability — the uninterrupted existence of everything that I love and care about is not guaranteed at all. I wait for catastrophes.

When I look at my old pictures, all I can see is what I used to be but am no longer. I think: What I can see is what I am not.

Home is where somebody notices when you are no longer there.

The perfect borscht is what life should be but never is.

Belief and delusion are incestuous siblings.

I am itching to criticize some well-regarded writers' works, but I am not doing it because I am perfectly aware that my critique could easily be reduced to envy or just plain meanness.

I gradually became aware that my interiority was inseparable from my exteriority, that the geography of my city was the geography of my soul.

I much preferred winning to thinking and I didn't like losing at all.

You don't want your neurosurgeon to have doubts about the meaning of it all while he or she is operating on your brain.

If you can't go home, there is nowhere to go, and nowhere is the biggest place in the world-indeed, nowhere is the world.

We knew - but didn't want to know - what was going to happen, the sky descending upon our heads like the shadow of a falling piano in a cartoon.

Jöns: But feel, to the very end, the triumph of being alive!

We know that the world is not resting on the horn of a bull

The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one often comes from a strong will and the other from a strong won't.

If you know you are going to fail, then fail gloriously.

Better make friends with an ignoramus who is liberal with his money and of a pleasing disposition than with a scholar who is mean and irascible.

Some guys are admired for coming to play, as the saying goes. I prefer those who come to kill.

A big part of willpower is having something to aspire to, something to live for.

When I first heard Elvis perform "Bridge Over Trouble Water" it was unbelivable,and I thought to myself, how the hell can I compete with that?

Jill was tall and slim, like most Moroi. With that figure came a modest chest. Angeline's chest...was not so modest.

It's pretty obvious, isn't it? I'm joining your crappy little renegade pack. The vampires' guard dogs.