It was funny, he reflected later, how one’s life could alter in an instant, how one minute everything could be a certain way, and the next it’s simply ... not

She was petite, small in that way that made a man want to slay dragons.

You always get more respect when you don't have a happy ending.

Society is capricious and rewards the bad as often as the good. But it never rewards the quiet.

I had to do something," she said. "I couldn't just sit and wait for life to happen to me any longer.

I vow to spend the rest of my life keeping your hands and feet warm.

I don't know whether to toss you through that window or shake your hand and say 'Well done'" Henry said in a tired voice.

sometimes there are reasons for our fears that we can’t quite explain. Sometimes it’s just something we feel in our bones, something we know to be true, but would sound foolish to anyone else.

She hated that she was still so desperate for a glimpse of him, but it had been this way for years.

James - "Are you paying attention or just trying to make me look like an idoit?" Elizabeth - "Oh, I'm definately paying attention. If you look like an idiot it has nothing to do with me.

Sometimes Hen...I think I would give my life just for one of your smiles.

One gains a profoundly personal, selfish joy from the mere existence of the person one loves. It is one’s own personal, selfish happiness that one seeks, earns and derives from love.

If you want to be successful, find someone who has already done it and do it the same way they did.

I think that we are not in the position that we used to be. I think we were a very powerful, very wealthy country. And we're a poor country now. We're a debtor nation.

The traveller who has gone to Italy to study the tactile values of Giotto, or the corruption of the Papacy, may return remembering nothing but the blue sky and the men and women who live under it.

There are two kinds of stories, the ones you live and the ones you make up. And nobody knows the difference, and I don't ever tell which is which.

Of course it's all luck.

Ask her if she still keeps all her kings in the back row.

It was often this way, life consisted of a series of false beginnings, bluff declarations of arrival to destinations not even glimpsed.

I don't understand why or how anyone ever pulled off the whole idea of 'women are inferior.'

Leadership means firmness, not harshness or bullying; understanding, not weakness; justice, not irresponsible freedom; humaneness, not intolerance; generosity, not selfishness; pride, not egotism.