“It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees.” George Eliot

The problem with marriage is that it ends every night after making love, and it must be rebuilt every morning before breakfast.

When you come to the end of a rope, tie a knot and hang on: Franklin Roosevelt.

I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love: Mother Teresa

There is a way to be good again – Kite Runner

When I first became a parent I used to lie in bed at night and imagine the most horrible succession of maladies: the bite of a jellyfish, the taste of a poisonous berry, the smile of a dangerous stranger, the dive into a shallow pool. There are so many ways that a child can be harmed that it seems nearly impossible that one person alone could succeed at keeping him safe. As my children got older, the hazards only changed: inhaling glue, playing with matches, small pink pills sold behind the bleachers of the middle school. You can stay up all night and still not count the ways to lose the people you love. – My Sister’s Keeper

But kids don’t stay where they are supposed to. You turn around and find her not in the bedroom but hiding in a closet; you turn around and see she’s not three but thirteen. Parenting is really just a matter of tracking, of hoping your kids do not get so far ahead you can no longer see their next move.- My Sister’s Keeper

She was the book thief without the words

Trust me, though, the words were on their way, and when they arrived, Liesel would hold them in her hands like the clouds, and she would wring them out like rain. – Book Thief

Children aren’t coloring books. You don’t get to fill them with your favorite colors – Kite Runner

I love you enough to keep you on repeat for the rest of my life – Stephanie Klein

If they killed him tonight, at least he would die alive. – Book Thief

Frustration is a sign that somewhere you took the matter too seriously. 

Your opening paragraph sells the book. The final paragraph sells your next book. – Mickey Spillane

There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you – J.K.Rowling

I can resist everything except temptation – Oscar Wilde

It is a strange fact that a terrible pain in the heart can be interrupted by a little pain in the fourth toe of the right foot.

It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart -Anne Frank

I venture that sport starts to go wrong as soon as it is taken too seriously; and that can happen in a school playground as easily as in an Olympic stadium. It can happen in the mind of an athlete who values winning above all else, or in the heart of a spectator who becomes a manic obsessive -Joe Humphreys

You want to invest your luck properly, be conservative, despite being young, you want to hoard the moments and keep them. Terrified you’ll piss off the fate gods, you think before speaking, worried you’ll say the wrong thing and jinx things.  You don’t know whom you can tell, or how much telling is an overindulgence…Is this really happening? Like, can I tell the cab driver? Is that safe? What if I whisper it? It will stay closer to me if I just whisper it. -Stephanie Klein (author of Straight up and dirty and Moose)

I like flaws and feel more comfortable around who have them. I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.

Taken from Augusten Burroughs’ story titled Beating Raoul from the compilation Magical Thinking: True Stories.

Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea

“You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.”

- Albert Einstein, explaining radio

“Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.” Mark Twain

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” –Martin Luther King, Jr.

Farewells can be shattering, but returns are surely worse. Solid flesh can never live up to the bright shadow cast by its absence.

Time and distance blur the edges; then suddenly the beloved has arrived, and it’s noon with its merciless light, and every spot and pore and wrinkle and bristle stands clear.

A woman can say more in a sigh than a man can say in a sermon. –Arnold Haultain

This is one of the things I wasn’t prepared for—the amount of unfilled time, the long parentheses of nothing (Margaret Atwood)