“But time, it is like charm. You never have as much as you think.”

It always hurts more to have and lose than to not have in the first place.

I learned that the world didn’t see the inside of you, that it didn’t care a whit about the hopes and dreams, and sorrows, that lay masked by skin and bone. It was as simple, as absurd, and as cruel as that.

Beauty is an enormous, unmerited gift given randomly, stupidly.

People say that eyes are windows to the soul.

Of all the hardships a person had to face, none was more punishing than the simple act of waiting.

A pathetic shadow, torn between her envy and thrill of being seen with Masomma, sharing in the attention as a weed would, lapping up water meant for the lily upstream.

Time can be a greedy thing-sometimes it steals the details for itself.

They say, Find a purpose in your life and live it. But, sometimes, it is only after you have lived that you recognize your life had a purpose, and likely one you never had in mind.

Like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. Always.

What good is regret? It brings back nothing. What we have lost is irretrievable.

Some stories don’t need telling.

Nothing good came free. Even love. You paid for all things. And if you were poor, suffering was your currency.

All good things in life are fragile and easily lost.

I should have been more kind. That is something a person will never regret. You will never say to yourself when you are old, Ah, I wish I was not good to that person. You will never think that.

I opened my mouth, almost said something. Almost. The rest of my life might have turned out differently if I had. But I didn’t.

War doesn’t negate decency. It demands it, even more than in times of peace.

You’re a beautiful enigma and warmed in charming wit.

The tusk is a very tactile shape, looks great among the other charms and is a cool piece that I like.

She’s got no charisma of any kind [but] I can imagine her being mildly useful to a low-rank porn director.

Poverty often hides her charms under an ugly mask; yet thousands have been forced into greatness by their very struggle to keep the wolf from the door.

REALISM, n. The art of depicting nature as it is seem by toads. The charm suffusing a landscape painted by a mole, or a story written by a measuring-worm.

I look on the opposite sex with something like the admiration with which I regard the starry sky on a frosty December night. I admire the beauty of the Creator’s workmanship, I am charmed with the wild but graceful eccentricity of the motions, and then I wish both of them goodnight.

We would take something old and tired and common – coffee – and weave a sense of romance and community around it. We would rediscover the mystique and charm that had swirled around coffee throughout the centuries.

It is one thing to be eloquent and charming in profane speech, and another when the one speaking as a religious.