“This is where men and women are different, we can put aside petty competition for relationships – they can’t. It interferes.”

It doesn’t. What matters is what you make. Whether it’s a cake for bingo night or a costume for a saint or a wall of water-whatever you pour into this life is what makes you rich.

If there is one thing I hope my books do always and forever, its that they honor working people.

Same is true of liking a boy. If you cut off the thoughts, if you stop pinning, you’re free to find a boy who is attainable.

I even love the smell of books.

This should tell you everything you need to know about guys.

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

So for them 15 years is a blink of an eye. I am nothing but grateful.

I have candles going, and small objects that remind me of what I am working on, or bring me into the world of the character.

When I see it lumbering down the mountain road like a tank . . . I flag it down like an old friend. I’ve waited on this corner every Friday since I can remember.

I am no trouble at all. You could press me into dough and make sugar cookies out of me, I’ve been so sweet.

Regardless of whether they loved us back or treated us fairly or understood our shortcomings.

To fail and succeed and flourish and fly.

I adored the Iranian sisters, Marjan, Bahar and Layla, who are looking to build a life, start a business and find love in a place so far from home.

People have often told me that one of their strongest childhood memories is the scent of their grandmother’s house.

The wedding vows are a license to be a complete jerk.

I don’t even like the sound of the dryer going – I like the quiet.

Human reason can excuse any evil; that is why it’s so important that we don’t rely on it.

When do any of us ever do enough?

Any happiness, no matter how brief, seemed better than the long, simmering torture of waking up day after day, knowing i could never have him.

You will die. You will not live forever. Nor will any man nor any thing. Nothing is immortal. But only to us is it given to know that we must die. And that is a great gift: the gift of selfhood. For we have only what we know we must lose, what we are willing to lose…

Love is like any other luxury. You have no right to it unless you can afford it.

Any one prominent in affairs can always see when a man may steal a horse and when a man may not look over a hedge.

One cannot demand of art that it pay you in any other way than in the satisfaction of the work itself.

I do not believe in any religion, I will have nothing to do with immortality. We are miserable enough in this life without speculating upon another.