“But I learned that art can be found in all of life, even in pain.”

If you look around to find meaning in everything that happens you will end up disappointed.

A practical girl never pines; she takes action.

No one worries about you like your mother, and when she is gone, the world seems unsafe.

Book clubs are the best thing that has happened to the world of publishing.

I ask myself, If I knew all the answers, would it help? I lie awake and wonder why I don’t have parents and wonder what will become of my brother and me.

But a child’s joy is doubled for the mother, and the sound of her son’s laughter began to her heart.

No one knows you like the people you live with, and no one will take up your cause to the outside world quite like your blood relatives.

Someone to talk to, to share with, to run things by.

How childish to think that could be easy.

If only men came made to order. It’s so hard to find a decent fellow.

Everything has to be clean and orderly when I sit down to write.

I don’t settle in any other area of my life when it comes to excellence, so why should I lower my standards when it comes to boys?

Those who want to know the facts, and those who want to make up a nice story to feel better.

I like it when my mother smiles. And I especially like it when I make her smile.

Maybe a first love exists to reaffirm the best parts of yourself, the choices you made when you didn’t worry about the consequences.

Ireland has never been more beautiful – the perfect setting for this story filled with humor, hope and possibility.

I believe that things are always going to work out, even if in the beginning it doesn’t look like they are working out. I know in the long run they are going to work out, and it’s going to be fine.

I know now that what makes a fool is an inability to take even his own good advice.

The nature of power is such that even those who have not sought it, but have had it forced upon them, tend to acquire a taste for more.

Even if you’re Bill Gates, you’ve got problems. I’m sure he would probably easily give a few billion dollars to get rid of all the problems that he has.

And even a liar can be scared into telling the truth, same as honest man can be tortured into telling a lie.

Even as a fierce competitor I try to smile.

Governance can dig itself into a huge hole and not even know it’s in there.

Even if you got rid of paper, you would still have story-tellers. In fact, you had the story-tellers before you had the paper.