“People who are going to get along really well know it almost as soon as they meet. You spend a little while talking and everyone starts to feel this conviction, you’re all equally sure that you’re at the beginning of something good. That’s how it is when you meet people you’re going to be with for a long time.”

I realized that the world did not exist for my benefit. It followed that the ratio of pleasant and unpleasant things around me would not change. It wasn’t up to me. It was clear that the best thing to do was to adopt a sort of muddled cheerfulness.

Recognizing how totally ignorant you are is the only honest way to deal with people who’ve been through something traumatic.

I should have told her at the time. I could have taken a deep breath, looked away, and forced myself to say it.

The sky was incredibly far away, and beautiful enough to make a person wonder why our hearts are never so free.

People aren’t overcome by situations or outside forces. Defeat comes from within.

Someday, without fail, everyone will disappear, scattered into the blackness of time.

Even when I try to stir myself up, I just get irritated because I can’t make anything come out. And in the middle of the night I lie here thinking about all this. If I don’t get back on track somehow, I’m dead, that’s the sense I get. There isn’t a single strong emotion inside me.

I wonder what it felt to move to a country where you didn’t grow up. I had thought about that often since my sister got married. Do you become a character in a story native to that land, or do you, somewhere in your heart, want to return to your homeland.

Why is it that everything I eat when I’m with you is so delicious?’ I laughed. ‘Could it be that you’re satisfying hunger and lust at the same time?

The place I like best in this world is the kitchen. No matter where it is, no matter what kind, if it’s a kitchen, if it’s a place where they make food, it’s fine with me. Ideally it should be well broken in. Lots of tea towels, dry and immaculate. Where tile catching the light (ting! Ting!)” (p. 3).

When someone tells you something big, it’s like you’re taking money from them, and there’s no way it will ever go back to being the way it was. You have to take responsibility for listening.

I never tell my boyfriend that I’m busy when I’m not. No matter how effective they are, cheap techniques like that just don’t agree with me. So it’s always okay, it’s always all right. In my opinion the surest way to hook a man is to be as open with him as possible.

Once you’ve recognized your own limits, you’ve raised yourself to a higher level of being, since you’re closer to the real you.

Everyone lives the way she knows best. What I mean by ‘their happiness’ is living a life untouched as much as possible by the knowledge that we are really, all of us, alone. That’s not a bad thing.

This world of ours is piled high with farewells and goodbyes of so many different kinds, like the evening sky renewing itself again and again from one instant to the next-and I didn’t want to forget a single one.

Fate is a ladder on which you cannot afford to miss a single rung. To skip out on even one step would mean you’ll never make it to the top.

Deadlines refine the mind. They remove variables like exotic materials and processes that take too long.

If I haven’t had any long term psychological side effects from all the things I’ve already done on this show, this isn’t gonna hurt much more.

The world is not as it was when it came from its Maker’s hands.

I want to say a little something that’s long overdue, the disrespect to women has got to be through.

Getting paid less to work for people you like and believe in is much better for you (and your career) in the long run.

Time that is moved by little fidget wheels Is not myTime, the flood that does not flow.

The paint literally tells a story: what this thing is made of, where it’s been, what it’s been used for, and for how long.

If you hang around long enough, they think you’re good.