“There are a hundred things she has tried to chase away the things she won’t remember and that she can’t even let herself think about because that’s when the birds scream and the worms crawl and somewhere in her mind it’s always raining a slow and endless drizzle.”

Life is a disease: sexually transmitted, and invariably fatal.

Sometimes we can choose the paths we follow. Sometimes our choices are made for us. And sometimes we have no choice at all.

Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up.

You’re always you, and that doesn’t change, and you’re always changing, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

We owe it to each other to tell stories.

Ideas are more difficult to kill than people, but they can be killed, in the end.

Words save our lives, sometimes.

When I was a child, adults would tell me not to make things up, warning me of what would happen if I did. As far as I can tell so far, it seems to involve lots of foreign travel and not having to get up too early in the morning.

Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like ‘maybe we should be just friends’ turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination.

What do stars do? They shine.

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful.

The future came and went in the mildly discouraging way that futures do.

Every hour wounds. The last one kills.

I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, you’re doing something.

Everybody going to be dead one day, just give them time.

A book is a dream that you hold in your hands.

I believe that our memories are part of one great memory, the memory of Nature herself.

The stars and the moon owe you nothing. But you – owe yourself everything.

That field hath eyen, and the wood hath ears.

Deviation from Nature is deviation from happiness.

Love is like water; like a river crushing through the mountains to carve its own path. Love will make its own way but only if you have the courage to follow.

Borrow trouble for yourself, if that’s your nature, but don’t lend it to your neighbours.

The handsome gifts that fate and nature lend us Most often are the very ones that end us.

You can’t deny what you’ve learned; you can’t deny your travels; you can’t deny the nature of your life.