Turn away. From the darkness, the madness, the pain. Open your eyes and look at the light.
Most of the mess that is called history comes about because kings and presidents cannot be satisfied with a nice chicken and a good loaf of bread.
Hope is the crystal meth of emotions. It hooks you fast and kills you hard.
I play until my fingers are blue and stiff from the cold, and then I keep on playing. Until I’m lost in the music. Until I am the music – notes and chords, the melody and harmony. It hurts, but it’s okay because when I’m the music, I’m not me. Not sad. Not afraid. Not desperate. Not guilty.
Cripes Miss Wilcox, they’re not guns,? I said. No, they’re not Mattie, they’re books. And a hundred times more dangerous.
Beautiful people don’t need coats. They’ve got their auras to keep them warm.
It’s a good thing you and your pills weren’t around a few hundred years ago or there never would have been a Vermeer or a Caravaggio. You’d have drugged “Girl with a Pearl Earring” and “The Taking of Christ” right the hell out of them.
Why do you write?′ Because I love words and stories so much. Because I would be grief stricken every day of my life if I couldn’t write. Because I’m obsessed and compelled. Because I’d be utterly useless at anything else.
It’s not pride I’m feeling. It’s another sin. Worse than all the other ones, which are immediate, violent, and hot. This one sits inside you quietly and eats you from the inside out like the trichina worms the pigs get. It’s the Eighth Deadly Sin. The one God left out. Hope.
I love you, too... I won’t ever leave you again. I promise. I kept that promise. For love him I did. For nearly two years I spent almost every waking hour with him. Until he was taken from me. But I never left him. And I never will.
Life, Rose well knew, could throw some hard punches at you, but nothing hurt as much as losing a child, or seeing one of your children hurt and suffering. Becoming a parent changed you forever, as nothing else could. Not good or bad fortune. Not friendships. Not even a man or a woman.
Revolutions come about when small things happen to small people.
How it grieves me to think that the world always wins... but it goes on, this world, stupid and brutal. But I do not. I do not.
It’s all about the pain, isn’t it?
Lots of things are true. Doesn’t mean you have to go around saying them.
Break a promise to the dead and they’ll haunt you, Ada says. Keep the promise and they’ll haunt you just the same.
Because nothing is more dangerous than hope.
I take a seat high above the BQE, stare at Manhatten for a bit, and then I play. For hours. I play until my fingertips are raw. Until I rip a nail and bleed on the strings. Until my hands hurt so bad I forget my heart does.
Meet me where the sky touches the sea. Wait for me where the world begins.
He who cannot endure the bad will not live to see the good.