You—you were like me. You were a child. A normal child. And that was taken from you.”“Does that bother you?”“Well, it certainly makes you harder to hate.

Life is made of so many moments that mean nothing. Then one day, a single moment comes along to define every second that comes after. Such moments are tests of courage, of strength.

I never feared the night, not even as a child, but Blackcliff’s night is different, heavy with a silence that makes you look over your shoulder, a silence that feels like a living thing.

Seeing the enemy as human. A general's ultimate nightmare.

Exhaustion is temporary. Pain is temporary. But Helene dying because I didn't find a way to get her back on time—that's permanent.

I don't smile at her. It will only scare her. For a female slave, a smile from a Mask is not usually a good thing.

There are two kinds of guilt: the kind that drowns you until you’re useless, and the kind that fires your soul to purpose.

She's still clinging to the side of her mountain, just like I'm still wandering lost in my battlefield.

Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery.

I am so thankful to MOTHER for making my ordinary life extraordinary. MOTHER - Multiplied Opportunities Through Her Endless Reinvention.

Phrase books seem to be a universal and eternal source of hilarity and I think I know why. Their authors go mad in the course of compiling them.

I dreamt of being a writer once I started to read. I started to write 'Bonjour Tristesse' in bistros around the Sorbonne. I finished it, I sent it to editors. It was accepted.

Murder begins where self-defense ends.

Technology is the gene uncorked.

If people don't like you, it doesn't matter how much uniqueness, nerve or talent you have!

The trouble with the world is not that people know too little; it's that they know so many things that just aren't so.

When a nice girl overcompensates, her behavior says, “What I have to offer isn’t enough, and who I am isn’t enough.

A poor leader will tell you how many people work for them. A great leader will tell you how many people they work for.