“Maybe a first love exists to remind you to be brave in the moment, to stand up for your feelings, instead of shrinking back in the face of potential loneliness.”

Energy has to be fed from a source. If you don’t feed the source, it dissipates entirely.

Don’t worry about bad things that haven’t happened yet. It will save you a lot of anxiety.

Looking back, now, I realize that you only ever need one person who lights up that way when you enter a room.

Furthermore, the writer is not there to see the reaction of the person he writes to, so there’s a great unknown to the process that requires a leap of faith.

I have been a joy to live with all spring: Upbeat, warm and tender, uncomplicated, and loving.

It’s service. And I took that ethic and applied it to my writing craft.

And who encouraged you to grow a good heart. When that layer goes, whatever is left of your childhood goes with her.

Sometimes we get our hearts broken, only to have the right person come along to mend them.

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.

The moth don’t care when he sees the flame He might get burned, but he’s in the game And once he’s in, he can’t go back He’ll beat his wings till he burns them black.

I have to get back to the hotel. But I don’t know the way. I always rely on Shouji so I didn’t notice where we were going.

The Taliban had become deeply unpopular and were actually discarded by the Pashtun population almost as quickly as they were in the north. I don’t see the Taliban coming back in any way.

I came back [to Beijing ] because that’s the only time I had an excuse to come back, or otherwise I would never have a reason to come back.

I’m not nostalgic. My memories are back here in my mind.

Back in the days when I was young I’m not a kid anymore But some days I sit and wish I was a kid again

Once again, we find ourselves back in the unknown – not in the idea of the unknown, but in the lived reality of it. It’s the mind humbled, on its knees, with bare feet and free of the known.

Every one of my works, when I’m looking back, becomes some kind of solution, or something to concentrate on.