Books may well be the only true magic.
Sometimes the right thing feels all wrong until it is over and done with.
It doesn't matter what people tell you. It doesn't matter what they might say. Sometimes you have to leave home. Sometimes, running away means you're headed in the exact right direction.
My darling girl, when are you going to realize that being normal is not necessarily a virtue? It rather denotes a lack of courage." - Aunt Frances
The moon is always jealous of the heat of the day, just as the sun always longs for something dark and deep.
When I walk, I walk with you. Where I go, you're with me always.
Every fairy tale had a bloody lining. Every one had teeth and claws.
...he had a way of taking your hand which made it clear he'd have to be the one to let go." From Alice Hoffman's "Local Girls", pg.102.
Trouble is just like love, after all; it comes in unannounced and takes over before you've had a chance to reconsider, or even to think.
When all is said and done, the weather and love are the two elements about which one can never be sure.
Be careful what you wish for. I know that for a fact. Wishes are brutal, unforgiving things. They burn your tongue the moment they're spoken and you can never take them back.
Just because something is unspoken doesn't mean that it disappears.
Pride is a funny thing; it can make what is truly worthless appear to be a treasure.
Do you ever just put your arms out and just spin and spin and spin? Well, that's what love is like; everything inside of you tells you to stop before you fall, but for some reason you just keep going.
The weak are cruel. The strong have no need to be.
You can be betrayed in your sleep. The whole world can tilt while you're dreaming of butterflies.
My grief was cold. It was nothing to share. It was nothing to speak about, nothing to feel.
Unrequited love is so boring. Weeping under a blue-black sky is for suckers or maniacs.
Every problem has a solution, although it may not be the outcome that was originally hoped for or expected.
Here's the thing about luck...you don't know if it's good or bad until you have some perspective.
Once you know some things, you can't unknow them. It's a burden that can never be given away.
Here is the riddle of love: Everything it gives to you, it takes away.
Still, she knows one thing for certain: never judge a relationship unless you are the one wrapped up in its arms.
I dream of a love that even time will lie down and be still for.
Sometimes words drew blood, they cut your tongue, they made you know things you couldn't unknow.
In losing a friend, she is reminded of all she has lost and all she stands to lose again. There is nothing to be done to make it any easier. We all grieve alone.
He started to look at me in a manner I recognized: it was the way I looked at a new book, one I had never read before, one that surprised me with all it had to say.
That is the joy of reading fiction: when all is said and done, the novel belongs to the reader and his or her imagination.
The sky is already purple; the first few stars have appeared, suddenly, as if someone had thrown a handful of silver across the edge of the world.
Some people say, 'Save yourself and you save your ways.' I say, 'Be yourself and you save your soul.
Crying wasn't like riding a bike. Give it up, and you quickly forget how it's done.
Some things you cannot wish away or think away. They become part of you when you remember them.
Some things, when they change, never do return to the way they once were. Butterflies for instance, and women who've been in love with the wrong man too often.
No one knows you like a person with whom you've shared a childhood. No one will ever understand you in quite the same way.
Instead of going home, I drove to the library. To hell with human beings. I’d always felt safer with stories than with flesh and blood.
I knew what it was to yearn for a life so distant it seemed that it had never been anything more than a dream.
I'm at the point where going forward is easier than going back.
You cannot dispute the ridiculous. You cannot argue reasonably with evil.
Being human means losing everything we love best in the world," she murmured as she released me. "But would you ask to be anything else?
Are people drawn to each other because of the stories they carry inside?
Holding a tear back makes them drain upward, higher and higher, until one day your head just explodes and you're left with a stub of a neck and nothing more.
She was disappearing a little more each day, so thin, so frail, a wisp of smoke. One day she would surely vanish altogether, and there was no way to stop her.
She can feel his blood, just beneath his skin; when he breathes, the air fills with smoke. He's like a dragon, ancient and fearless.
Love is worth the sum of itself, and nothing more.
That is how you know you've left childhood behind-when you wish for time to go backward.
Unfinished business always comes back to haunt you, and a man who swears he'll love you forever isn't finished with you until he's done.
It's not the lie that's the problem; it's the distance the lie forges between you.
You can never tell about a person by guessing...that's why language was invented. Otherwise, we'd all be like dogs, sniffing each other to find out where we stood.
What men yearn for they often destroy.
Those you love will not drown or burn. They will fly away.' ...'Now we both have people we love who are like birds. They have flown far from anything in this world that can hurt them. They're flying away still.
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.
 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. ){kind=small}
(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.
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.
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.
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.
The truth frightens people because it isn't stable. It shifts every day.
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.
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.
Good fortune can take forever to get to you, but as it turns out, sorrow is as quick as a shot.
She liked to disappear, even when she was in the same room as other people. It was a talent, as it was a curse.
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.
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.
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.
Our rest is formed by our waking life and our waking life is formed by our sorrows.
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.
I wasn't good company, that was true, and people avoided me, but that was all right. I was too busy dreaming.
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.
