I've always thought cruelty is a failure of imagination.

...falling in love could be achieved in a single word—a glance.

come back, come back to me

Imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion, and it is the beginning of morality.

I've never had a moment's doubt. I love you. I believe in you completely. You are my dearest one. My reason for life.

A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.

True intelligence requires fabulous imagination.

When its gone, you'll know what a gift love was. you'll suffer like this. So go back and fight to keep it.

I believe the novella is the perfect form of prose fiction. It is the beautiful daughter of a rambling, bloated ill-shaven giant (but a giant who's a genius on his best days).

I'm holding back, delaying the information. I'm lingering in the prior moment because it was a time when other outcomes were still possible.

Observing human variety can give pleasure, but so too can human sameness.

It's much easier to wear your pain on the outside...

He glanced again at her tightly drawn face as he parked and understood, with sudden, startling clarity, that if they failed to find Tanya alive, then Bella, too, would be lost.

If kids and teenagers can get into a band, it's probably not because they think it's brainy.

A relationship with an imaginary woman is preferable to a relationship with a real one.

When things mean a very great deal to you, exciting anticipation just isn't safe.

We're disappointed because you think the neighborhood is safe, it's very quiet here.

It is good even to be a fisherman in summer and in winter.

Scarlett, always save something to fear—even as you save something to love.

President Obama instituted the most anti-growth, anti-investment, anti-jobs measures that we have seen in our lifetime. Now he called his agenda ambitious, I call it reckless.

Every decision you make - every decision that you make every second - is not a decision about what to do, it is a decision about who you are. Every act is an act of self-definition.