I force my eyes upward and look at Mia for the first time. She's still beautiful. Not in an obvious Vanessa LeGrande or Bryn Shraeder kind of way. In a quiet way that's always been devastating to me. Her hair, long and dark, is down now, swimming damply against her bare shoulders, which are still milky white and covered with the constellation of freckles that I used to kiss. The scar on her left shoulder, the one that used to be an angry red weld is silvery pink now. Almost like the latest rage in tattoo accessories. Almost pretty.

The book which the reader now holds in his hands, from one end to the other, as a whole and in its details, whatever gaps, exceptions, or weaknesses it may contain, treats of the advance from evil to good, from injustice to justice, from falsity to truth, from darkness to daylight, from blind appetite to conscience, from decay to life, from bestiality to duty, from Hell to Heaven, from limbo to God. Matter itself is the starting-point, and the point of arrival is the soul. Hydra at the beginning, an angel at the end.

Victor Hugo

Jews have had to carry around their own sense of self in a carpet bag and I think perhaps too much emphasis might be being put on nationality and on the other hand patriotism, that sort of thing.

Janet Suzman

Without free, self-respecting, and autonomous citizens there can be no free and independent nations. Without internal peace, that is, peace among citizens and between the citizens and the state, there can be no guarantee of external peace.

Vaclav Havel

People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.

Isaac Asimov

Maybe mothers - consciously or subconsciously - repelled their daughters in different ways.

Jodi Picoult

Luck was a joke. Even good luck was just bad luck with its hair combed.

Stephen King

Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.

Albert Camus

No body told you to call your band Salacious Mold, my friend.

Cassandra Clare

Were there peace and justice in the Middle East, the Arabs would no more need their tinhorn dictators than they would their corpulent princes.

James Buchan

When the tide of life turns against youAnd the current upsets your boat,Don't waste tears on what might have been,Just lie on your back and float.

Anon.

Feelings are like chemicals, the more you analyze them the worse they smell.

Charles Kingsley

There's so much to be grateful for, words are poor things.

Marilynne Robinson