Life wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t supposed to be. Eternal beauty could not exist if it were not for the face of a fatal flaw.

Now, Emily didn't make a sound. There was something more defining about the soundless reality that condemned the paradigm of passion.

The universe requires balance. Nothing, nothing, can exist without it. There is no life, no light, without death, without darkness. There is no memory… without emptiness.

Let her go, ” Brendan said, and Will did. And that was the biggest mistake of his life. Letting her go.

The most important things, the experiences that leave marks on our souls for everyone to see, those marks that reflect our most intense emotions in a glass pane, we will never forget.

It takes two to tango, and if you dance too long, implosion is inevitable.

What is perfect, anyway? The absence of perfection and the existence of human nature in place of something we want to do or we don’t want to do, is an excuse, not an exoneration.

because in the past words have only driven them apart.

...a butterfly is like the soul of a person, it dries out in captivity.

I don't know, " Jason said with a shrug. "Maybe it's too late for me. Maybe my heart is already too far good."With a smile she said softly, "It's never too late to be good.

Fo' Gawd, Miss Scarlett! We's got ter have a doctah. Ah- Ah- Miss Scarlett, Ah doan know nuthin' 'bout bringin' babies. -Prissy

A man's free will cannot cure him even of the toothache, or a sore finger; and yet he madly thinks it is in its power to cure his soul.

I always say to my students, if you can do anything other than writing and be happy, then you should.

The test of a civilized person is first self-awareness, and then depth after depth of sincerity in self-confrontation.

I never found anyone who could look after me as well as I could look after myself.

I read Nietzsche when I was a teenager and then I went back to reading him when I was in my thirties, and his voice spoke directly to me. Nietzsche is such a superb literary artist.

I half wish that I had not been born with a sense of romance and beauty in this accursed age.