“People aren’t often asked to make life or death decisions. There are no causes to die for. You can go through life never knowing which of your friends would really come through for you”

Aided and abetted by market forces and the laws of supply and demand, he hones his skill to stand up but make sure he’s never counted.

I think women sign on for some ideal when they get married, and when they realise they haven’t got anything close to what they want, they bury their disappointment.

You don’t need to know what you’re escaping from to become a fugitive.

If America is the land of opportunity, a country where perseverance and hard work is rewarded by recognition, then an illegal harbors the opposite ambitions. His greatest reward us anonymity, invisibility.

Children expect their mothers to love them, no matter what. Those who don’t get this tend to feel cheated the rest of their lives.

Discontented women are like pressure cookers. The steam rises and one day they just reach boiling point.

Let me tell you something: You can live in a broken home, you can play with a broken toy, but you cannot love with a broken heart.

Unhappiness is a dangerous thing, like carbon monoxide. You don’t smell it, you don’t taste it, it’s formless and colourless, but it poisons slowly. It seeps into every pore of your skin until one day your heart just stops beating.

Women only cut their hair in times of crisis… It’s somethin’ a woman always has the power to do, even when she loses control over everything else. Cuttin’ hair is a cry for help.

The world exists on thousands of different levels and just because some are more tragic than others, it doesn’t make them any more valid. You fall into that way of thinking and you become so overwhelmed by the world’s suffering, you go mad.

Dogs aren’t born knowing what or what not to do; they only learn like children.

Study the rules so that you won’t beat yourself by not knowing something.

The success of most things depends upon knowing how long it will take to succeed.

Sometimes the characters develop almost without your knowing it. You find them doing things you hadn’t planned on, and then I have to go back to page 42 and fix things. I’m not recommending it as a way to write. It’s very sloppy, but it works for me.

I had refused Emerson’s well-meant offers of assistance, knowing his efforts would be confined to moving the furniture to the wrong places and demanding how much longer the process would take.

Elizabeth lay face-down on the massage table, and allowed Marco to relieve the stress of the business day with firm and knowing fingers. Success, she decided, was often a matter of knowing when to relax.

She put her hand in his, and he clasped it firmly, knowing he had been waiting for her all his life.

A lot of what we experience as strength comes from knowing what to do with weakness. Nickel and Dimed On (Not) Getting By in America