I looked down at the little pink face in the bundle. A newborn. The child had been alive only minutes but was already considered a criminal by the Soviets.

I leapt eagerly into books. The characters’ lives were so much more interesting than the lonely heartbeat of my own.

I felt as if I were riding a pendulum. Just as I would swing into the abyss of hopelessness, the pendulum would swing back with some small goodness.

Sometimes there is such beauty in awkwardness.

Andrius, I'm...scared." He stopped and turned to me. "No. Don't be scared. Don't give them anything Lina, not even your fear.

He threw his burning cigarette onto our clean living room floor and ground it into the wood with his boot. We were about to become cigarettes.

Whether love of friend, love of country, love of God, or even love of enemy—love reveals to us the truly miraculous nature of the human spirit.

Decisions, they shape our destiny.

A wrongdoing doesn't give us the right to do wrong.

Some things just won’t go away, no matter how hard you scrub.

What do you do with all this bank, Josie? Be a lot easier if you just lifted your skirt.” “The only reason I’d lift my skirt is to pull out my pistol and plug you in the head.

She knows exactly what I like and what it does to me. She worships my body in its entirety and I allow it—I crave it.

She looked at me for a second and said, "Oh, never mind. I guess it's true what Mom said? That you've led a sheltered life?"I said I thought the description fairly apt.

A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.

Armies for the preservation of peace do not exist; they exist only for the triumphant exertion of war.

We do not truly see light, we only see slower things lit by it, so that for us light is on the edge-the last thing we know before things become too swift for us.

My heart died a while back. [Eragon]

We have to support our own films. If we don't, how can we expect others to support them?

The stream of praying cannot rise higher than the fountain of living.

Short boughs, long vintage.

Don't think being 'religious' means becoming harsh or hard. When Allah enters a heart, He softens it--He doesn't harden it.