Cecelia Ahern

“A good deed was indeed a triumph for the soul.”

“May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of your soul.”

“But with your life you make a few bad decisions, get unlucky a few times, whatever, but you have to keep going, right?”

“I guess when you’re trying to find all the parts of yourself, it’s difficult to be with someone who’s already fully intact.”

“I lost my dad. He lost his tomorrows and I lost all the tomorrows with him. You could say that now, I appreciate them when they come. Now, I want to make them the best they can possibly be.”

“It’s difficult to know which second among a lifetime of seconds is more special. Often when you realise how precious those seconds are, it’s too late for them to be captured because the moment has passed. We realise too late.”

“Sometimes that's all people ever really need. Just to know.”

“Sometomes that's all people ever really need. Just to know.”

“Imagine you had a friend who was there for you all the time and you were there for them, but they stopped being there for you as much as they used to which you can understand a little because people have things to do, but then they’re around less and less no matter how much you try to reach out to them. Then suddenly one day - nothing - they’re gone. Just like that. Then you write to them, and you’re ignored, and then you write to them again and you’re ignored and finally you write to them for a third time and they barely even want to make the appointment, they’re so busy with their job, their friends and their car. How would you feel?”

“Dreams should make you think, ‘If I had the guts to do it and I didn’t care what anybody thought, this I what I’d really do’.”

“Father and I have the best relationship. Sometimes our thoughts are so similar it’s almost as if we’re the same person. When people see us they are blown away by our bond, by the respect he holds for me, by the admiration I hold for him.”

“I generally don’t become overexcited about things anyway, I’m just not one of those people. I’m not easily surprised by things either. I think it’s because I expect that anything can happen”

“Well that's the problem with paradise- nothing attracts a serpent quite like it.”

“Tired from my all-nighter with my friends, I just kept walking, my head bursting with their conversations, the things I had learned-Laura had had to take the morning-after pill-but none were as loud as the conversations I was having with myself in my head. That, I could never switch off. I don’t think I’d ever thought so much, and talked so little, in my life.”

“Some people say that you shouldn't operate from a place of fear but if there is no fear, how is there a challenge?”

“We all make mistakes, some bigger than others, but none of us is perfect.”

“Her best friend was gone and nobody understood that no amount of makeup, fresh air or shopping was going to fill the hole in her heart.”

“what a luxury it was for people to beable to hold their loved ones whenever they wanted.”

“It doesn't matter where you are in the world because it's about where you are up here,' she touched the side of her head lightly. 'It's about the other world I inhabit. The world of dreams, hope, imagination and memories. I'm happy up here,' she tapped her temple again and smiled, 'and because of that I'm happy up here too.' She held out her arms and displayed the countryside around her....”

“...the thing about love - no one is untouchable. It's as wild as that, as raw as an open flesh wound exposed to salty sea water, but when it actually breaks, it's silent. You're just screaming on the inside and no one can hear it.”

“...the more you try to simplify things, the more you complicate them.”

“..Don't ever take for granted when people look in your eyes - you've no idea how lucky you are. Actually, forget about the luck, you've no idea how important it is to be acknowledged, even if it is with an angry glare. It's when they ignore you, when they look right through you, that you should start worrying.”

“...the thing about lessons: you always learn them when you don't expect them or want them.”

“Stars are like people,.. just because they appear to emerge from the same point doesn't mean that they do. This is an illusion of perspective created by distance. Not all families manage to hold it together,..Everyone moves in different directions. That we all emerge from the same point is a misconception; to travel in different directions is the very nature of every being and every existing thing.”

“What we didn't need to know, we didn't need to ask. Some people just don't quite get the gist of that. You can have plenty of conversations with people, meaningful conversations without getting to personal.”

“To borrow means to take and use something belonging to someone else and then eventually return it.”

“You're right, i don't have common sense. I don't want to believe what every one else believes. I have my own thoughts, things that weren't taught to me or things that I didn't read in a book. I learn from experience - you, you are afraid to experience anything and so you will always have your common sense and only your common sense.”

“Children understand...things far better. Adults always make things so complicated.”

“...kids always know what's going on, even before you know yourself sometimes.”

“Children always want the same things because they all need the same basic things.”

“Love is not a theme. It's an atmosphere, a mood.”

“Life is everything, and you haven't lived it properly until you believe.”

“...children learn much more, far more quickly than adults. Do you know why that is? Because they're open-minded. Because they want to know and they want to learn. Adults, think they know it all. They grow up and forget so easily and instead of opening their minds and developing it they choose what to believe and what not to believe. You can't make a choice on things like that: you either believe or you don't. That's why their learning is slower. They are more cynical, they lose faith and they demend to know things that will help them get by day by day. They've no interest in the extras...It's the extras that make life.”

“...all people needed was time and then they could figure most things out of themselves.”

“There are so many other wonderful things that eyes could see if they really focused. Life's kind of like a painting. A rally bizarre abstract painting. You could look at it and think that all it is is a blur. And you can continue living your life thinking that all it is is a blur. But if you really look at it, really see it, focus on it, and use your imagination, life can become so much more. That painting could be of the sea, the sky, people, buildings, a butterfly on a flower or anything except the blur you were once convinced it was.”

“Friends come in all different shapes and sizes... The important thing is not what we look like but the role we play in our best friend's life. Friends choose certain friends because that's the kind of company they are looking for at that specific time, not because they're the correct height, age or have the right hair colour. It's not always the case but often there's a reason why...”

“...there are some people in the world that don't hug you all the time or play games but they still love you. They just don't know how to say it.”

“As long as you're around, your life is too. So just as you shower love and affection and attention on the husbands, wives, parents, children and forever friends who sorround you, you have to do so equally with your life, because it's yours, it's you, and it's always there rooting for you, cheering you on, even when you feel like you can't do it. I gave up on my life for a while, but what I've learned is that even when that happens and especially when that happens, life never gives up on you.”

“You see, I never knew what I wanted to be -- I still don;t know. All I knew was that I was supposed to get married and have babies just like my mother did and my sisters did. I wanted to do that. I met your father and I was his wife, that is who I was. Then I had my children. And then I was a mother. That's who I was. A wife and a mother but I don't know if I was or if I am of any real value. You and the boys are all grown up, so what I am now?”

“Don't worry, nothing speaks louder than a lifetime of regret and self-loathing.”

“How often we wish we'd stayed on the same path”

“..love was one of those feelings that you could never control.”

“Every table has a story”

“It's not the job of this town to make me feel happy. It's not this town´s fault that I don't feel I fit in. It doesn't matter where you are in the world, because it's about where you are in your head. It's about the other world I inhabit. The world of dreams, hope, imagination, and memories. I'm happy up here, and because of that I'm happy up there too”

“To hell with you all, I DO believe”

“Holly smiled weakly. Gerry would know exactly how she was feeling, he would know exactlywhat to say and he would know exactly what to do. He would give her one of his famous hugsand all her problems would melt away. She grabbed a pillow from her bed and hugged it tight.She couldn't remember the last time she hugged someone, really hugged someone. And thedepressing thing was that she couldn't imagine ever embracing anyone the same way again.”

“Hope makes you stronger, because it brings with it a sense of reason. Not a reason of how or why they were taken away from you, but a reason to live. Because it's a maybe. A 'maybe someday things won't always be this shit. And that 'maybe' immediately makes the shittiness better.”

“I always pushed myself. Whenever I felt I needed to stop, I made myself run faster.”

“I don't know if Marcus knows how important that moment was to me. How much he actually saved me from myself, from absolute despair. Maybe he does know and that's exactly what he was doing. He was like an angel who came into my life with his bus of books at exactly the right time, who whisked me away from a terrible place to a faraway land.”

“She would make facial expressions as though she were having conversations with people in her head.They seemed to turn into debates more often than not,judging by the activity on her forehead...It was almost the conversations in her head were loud enough to fill her silence.”