“What would it be like to look in the mirror and actually accept what you see? Not loathe the reflection, or despise it, or be resigned to it? But to like it?”

“To dream is to starve doubt, feed hope.”

“When the creative impulse sweeps over you, grab it. You grab it and honor it and use it, because momentum is a rare gift.”

“There must be a few times in life when you stand at a precipice of a decision. When you know there will forever be a Before and an After...I knew there would be no turning back if I designated this...”

“Flawed, we're truly interesting, truly memorable, and yes, truly beautiful.”

“This is beautiful," I said, ignoring the shop window to trace the gleaming stone walls fronting another boutique."You know what's funny?" Jacob asked. He didn't wait for my answer. "You can see bea...”

“To create art with all the passion in one's soul is to live art with all the beauty in one's heart.”

“art is risk made visible”

“Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.”

“Having friends was weird . . . but in a good way.”

“I always make sure that the world will prove me right. It gives me the freedom to contradict myself.”

“My peak? Would I even have one? I hardly had had anything you could call a life. A few ripples. some rises and falls. But that's it. Almost nothing. Nothing born of nothing. I'd loved and been love...”

“The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't li...”

“I wonder if fears ever really go away, or if they just lose their power over us.”

“Fear is all in the mind”