"Some stories stayed with you even when you wanted to forget them."

"Outside, the September air was enticingly fragrant, yellow with pollen and rich, lemony sunlight."

"We stood and watched as God abandoned us, and then we did the best we could."

"(Love) walks up to you,and when it does, you need to recognize it for what it is and, perhaps more important, for what it might become."

"I can hurt myself more than anyone else can," she told her sister. "I can do it with my eyes closed."

"The best way to die is when your living"

"Even as a small child, I understood that woman had secrets, and that some of these were only to be told to daughters. In this way we were bound together for eternity."

"I must keep my head and not give in to desire, for desire is what causes women to drown."

"Still anyone who trusts a serpent deserves its bite. The wise see a creature for what it is, not what it says it may be."

"It was the sort of beauty you feel so deeply it becomes contagious and somehow makes you feel beautiful too."

"But most important of all, she explained that it was all right to say 'No. I disagree.' that was a gift. I understood it was power. The power to think my own thoughts. The power to believe in myself."

"Some fates are guaranteed, no matter who tries to intervene."

"It was as if hope had appeared out of nowhere to settle beside her and it wasn't going anywhere, it wasn't going to desert her now."

"Women know things that men will never know. We keep the best secrets. We tell the best stories."

"She didn't like being twelve. It felt like someplace between who she'd been and who she was about to be. It felt like no place at all."

"Maybe some love was guaranteed. Maybe it fit inside you and around you like skin and bones."

"What you dream, you can grow. Someone told me that, but I didn't believe it. I said I had nothing and that people with nothing are unable to dream. But I was wrong."

"This day is going to be awful. It's the sort of day you wouldn't mind losing completely, even if it meant your life would be twenty-four hours shorter."

"You are only worthy of what you prove yourself to be."

"I was beginning to understand.My grandmother's love was cold because she was afraid of things;that was why everything had to be perfect."

"The truth frightens people because it isn't stable. It shifts every day."

"Every time someone forgets, someone else disappears,' my brother wrote."

"I heard a sigh, as though the books were breathing. I felt that this was where I belonged. This was where I lived."

"...but now the worst crime was pretending to be something you were not."

"She liked to disappear, even when she was in the same room as other people. It was a talent, as it was a curse."

"Good fortune can take forever to get to you, but as it turns out, sorrow is as quick as a shot."

"Whoever knows you when you are young can look inside you and see the person you once were, and maybe still are at certain times."

"Young people believe that regret is something you will never feel if you simply do as you please, but sometimes it is a matter of degree."

"The frightened walk away when love is difficult. I know that now. You have to be willing to give everything away. You have to be willing to end up with nothing. Only then will your heart be whole."

"They weren't true stories; they were better than that."

"Remember what I've told you. Remember me."

"People want to ignore what they can't understand. They're looking for logic at any cost."

"Perhaps it is possible to discover more in silence than in speech. Or perhaps it is only that those who are silent among us learn to listen."

"He was in love, and people in that condition did stupid, unfathomable things. They were all flawed, every single one."

"In a world of sorrow, love was an act of will. All you needed were the right ingredients."

"It's not finding what's lost, it's understanding what you've found."

"You don't fight for peace sister,' Nahara told me, 'You embrace it."

"He believed in dreams, in endings that people told you could never happen, in disappointments reversed and luck that lasted."

"She was so busy forgetting, she couldn't take a single step into the future."

"Never look at other people's bad fortune,' my mother said. 'If you do, it will come back to find you instead of its rightful owner."

If it wasn't for pick-pockets I'd have no sex life at all.

"Our rest is formed by our waking life and our waking life is formed by our sorrows."

"The more you feel, the stronger you are."

"If we had paid attention, we would have understood there are some things in this world you cannot outrun."

"How could I have been so stupid to ignore everything I’d had in my life? The color red alone was worth kingdoms."

"It was as though I had one map inside my head and it led to the man who was waiting for me. Someone who was alone — maybe even more alone — than I was…"

"I loved him even now, as he took a knife to my throat, as I drowned in blood, as I whispered "Cousin, you were wrong. We were born to live."

"This was what it meant to be human, to know that time moved and all things changed."

"He'd thought he was lost, but now he recognized that eternity was around him, like salt from a shaker or stars in the sky."

"Love was like that, like a dream you didn't quite understand, one in which you didn't necessarily know what you were looking at until it was right in front of you."