When you're with the person you love, you're home.

She watched the gap between ship and shore grow to a huge gulf. Perhaps this was a little like dying, the departed no longer visible to the others, yet both still existed, only in different worlds.

There is something about losing your mother that is permanent and inexpressable - a wound that will never quite heal.

Unexpected change is like a breath of fresh air -- a little brisk at first, but magic for the body and soul.

Tell the story that's in your heart, and don't hold back. Write a book the reader will want to melt into.

An event in the present evokes past sensations. But science couldn't explain how a foolish heart had the power to overrule common sense.

Insults sting but a little when they stem from a man's ignorance.

You're never alone when you're reading a book.

Fear and love were sometimes the same thing both necessary unavoidable. Now she understood that it was okay to bleed if you know how to heal.

Talent is required, but much of writing is a matter of craft, which develops with time, attention, patience and practice, like playing an instrument or learning to dance.

At the centre of every fairy tale lay a truth that gave the story its power

[Art] acts as 'an instrument allowing us to see through the gaps of dominant ideologies, and the source from which new methods could be drawn in the struggle against the system(s)'.

A woman will flirt with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on.

A good library will never be too neat, or too dusty, because somebody will always be in it, taking books off the shelves and staying up late reading them.

That’s the key to walking through the Wall.... You have to first see it as not being a Wall, even though everyone you know still sees it as a Wall.

In exchange for our humility and willingness to accept the charity of God, we are given a kingdom. And a beggar's kingdom is better than a proud man's delusion.

Love forgets wrongs so that there is hope for the future.

My music is the spiritual expression of what I am: my faith, my knowledge, my being.

Opera is a beautiful and important diversion for me.

Truth matters. Everything we can do to find, feed, and strengthen it is worth the effort.

We will compromise and compromise and compromise but we will never be compromised.