My favorite books are the ones that make me smile for hours after reading them. I want that for my readers, for the sweetness to linger. Sort of like chocolate, but without the calories.

It looked like the world was covered in a cobbler crust of brown sugar and cinnamon.

Sometimes you weren't supposed to share pain. Sometimes it was best just to deal with it alone.

Happiness is a risk. If you’re not a little scared, then you’re not doing it right.

Every life needs a little space. It leaves room for good things to enter it.

Don't let anyone see your vulnerable spots. Once they knew how to hurt you, they would do it again and again.

I needed to stop being what everyone thought I was.

The next morning dawned bright and sweet, like ribbon candy.

She looked like autumn, when leaves turned and fruit ripened.

You can't change where you come from, but you can change where you go from here. Just like a book. If you don't like the ending, you make up a new one.

She was so Southern that she cried tears that came straight from the Mississippi, and she always smelled faintly of cottonwood and peaches.

The magnitude of any one day is compromised by its passing quickly into the next, a mere moment in time which soon fades into the collective memory of our past.

Sometimes we look back and 10 years from now we think, 'Boy, those were great old days.' Well, you know, we're living in the good old days.

I have never been able to renounce the light, the pleasure of being, and the freedom in which I grew up.

I, as a Muslim woman living in 1993, I want to have two things - the mosque and the satellite, both at the same time. And no one can mutilate me by telling me I cannot have the mosque or the Koran.

Kyokoshin I've done most, but I competed in Sports Karate also, that's my style that I come from, and mixed with the wrestling that's how I got the takedowns.

I don't hate myself, as a general rule. I'd say the best way to describe it is that I have moments of self-loathing at fairly regular intervals.

Never waste a prayer on something that isn't important.

The acceptance of certain realities doesn't preclude idealism. It can lead to certain breakthroughs.

She began to be reassured by these pains, tangible symbols of her success in becoming thinner than anyone else. Her only identity was being "the skinniest." She had to feel it.

Today if I'm a cricketer it is because of Sachin Tendulkar. Else, I would never have picked up a bat. He's the reason behind me playing cricket