Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary.

I don't like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and it isn't of much value. Life hasn't revealed its beauty to them.

When a great moment knocks on the door of your life, it is often no louder than the beating of your heart, and it is very easy to miss it.

Man is born to live, not to prepare for life.

The writer is the Faust of modern society, the only surviving individualist in a mass age. To his orthodox contemporaries he seems a semi-madman.

To be a woman is a great adventure; To drive men mad is a heroic thing.

Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us.

They don't ask much of you. They only want you to hate the things you love and to love the things you despise.

In life it is more necessary to lose than to gain. A seed will only germinate if it dies.

And why is it, thought Lara, that my fate is to see everything and take it all so much to heart?

All mothers are mothers of great people, and it is not their fault that life later disappoints them.

The years in captivity fuels character development

It seems that life, in order to maintain itself, must revolt every so often against man's ceaseless attempts to master its irrational forces with his mind.

It's an ember forever burning in my heart. It's a reminder Caleb will live forever.

I am traveling less in order to be able to write more. I select my travel destinations according to their degree of usefulness to my work.

Society may predict, but only I can determine my destiny.

After my mother died, I found, a little book of hers which recorded everything I had ever done, how I had done it, and how proud she was of her son Conrad.

We can sit and worry about what's going to happen to us two weeks from now. I'd rather focus on the amazing things happening right in front of us.

The big scandal was when I was in seventh grade and I modeled a bathing suit. Everybody freaked out!

There ain't nothing like regret to remind you're alive.

Love is like moonlight or thunder, or rain on a tin roof in the middle of the night; it is one of those things in life that is truly worth knowing.