“So many bad things have happened to them that they can't trust the good things. They have to shove them away before someone can get it back.”

“I am not a smart man, particularly, but one day, at long last, I stumbled from the dark woods of my own, and my family's, and my country's past, holding in my hands these truths: that love grows fr...”

“I needed her to stop. Needed not to hear the pain in her voice--to see the way she was twisting the pocketbook strap. If she kept talking, she might break down and tell me everything.”

“A woman who surrenders her freedom need not surrender her dignity.”

“Is that what love is all about? Needing them to come back to you when they're away? To come home and keep you safe?”

“Look, don't just stare at the pages," I used to tell my students. "Become the characters. Live inside the book.”

“here she is, all mine, trying her best to give me all she can. How could I ever hurt her? But I didnt understand then. That I could hurt somebody so badly she would never recover. That a person can...”

“Any happiness, no matter how brief, seemed better than the long, simmering torture of waking up day after day, knowing I could never have him.”

“Everyone always wants to know how you can tell when it's true love, and the answer is this: when the pain doesn't fade and the scars don't heal, and it's too damned late.”

“Only once in your life, I truly believe, you find someone who can completely turn your world around. You tell them things that youve never shared with another soul and they absorb everything you sa...”

“As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there i...”