Cecelia Ahern

“One must not speak of such things. One is still scarred from that experience.”

“She couldn't remember the last time she hugged someone, really hugged someone.”

“Love frees a soul and in the same breath can sometimes suffocate it.”

“How else do you think life happens? A series of coincidences and occurrences have to happen somehow. Our lives all crash and collide and you think there's no reason or rhyme to it? If there wasn't any reason for it all, what would be the point? Why do you think anything happens at all? There is an outcome, repercussions and occurrences to everybody you meet and everything you say.”

“Sometimes wrong numbers are the right numbers”

“Don't mind all those people who say that you should be back to normal in a month or two. Grieving is all part of helping yourself anyway.”

“You never forget about things you've done that you know you shouldn't have done. They hang around your mind, linger like a thief casing a joint for a future job. You see them there, dramatically lurking nearby in striped monochrome, leaping behind postboxes as soon as your head whips around to confront them. Or it's a familiar face in a crowd that you glimpse but then lose sight of. An annoying Where's Wally? forever locked away and hidden in every thought in your conscience. The bad thing that you did, always there to let you know.”

“hundreds of butts in piles on the ground to mark the spot, their lives sucked out of them by their users in panicked distressed frenzy, their souls floating around the insides of lungs while their outsides were dropped, stamped on and deserted”

“But Holly, nobody’s life is filled with perfect little moments. And if it were, they wouldn’t be perfect little moments. They would just be normal. How would you ever know happiness if you never experienced downs?”

“And that is how the problems were always fixed. Fix them on the surface but don't go to the root, always ignoring the elephant in the room. I think that morning was when I realized I'd grown up with an elephant in every room. It was practically our family pet.”

“Finding someone you love and loves you back is a wonderful feeling. But finding a true soulmate is an even better feelin. A soulmate is someone who understands you like no other will be there for you forever no matter what.”

“He tried to tell me week after week to accept things as they were and move on with my life. But if there was one man who had put his life on hold to wait for something or someone, it was him.”

“He was one of those people who made you feel like they either didn't know or didn't care that you were in the room and if they ever did acknowledge your existence it was bizarrely score one to you, and twenty years later they'd tell you they'd always had a crush on you but never had the courage to say anything and you'd tell them, What? I didn't even think you liked me? and they'd say, Are you crazy? I just never knew what to say!”

“We had come here to have a break from thoughts and the hard work that came with the constant interaction with idiots. Or at least people we considered idiots because they were not mind readers and we had to, patiently, use polite words to explain things that we were thinking when really inside we were fighting the urge to take their heads in our hands and softly and repeatedly thud their foreheads off the wall.”

“Sometimes you have to give yourself to somebody in order to see who you are. Sometimes you have to unravel things to get to the core”

“This story is about people,secrets and time.About people who, not unlike parcels,hide secrets,who cover themselves with layers until they present themselves to the right ones who can unwrap them and see inside.”

“at your weakest, you end up showing more strength; at your lowest, you are suddenly lifted higher than you’ve ever been. They all border one another, these opposites and show how quickly we can be altered.”

“oh well, is it hurting anyone? Because if its not and you’ve been given it, I’d as soon stop calling it a thing and start referring to it as a gift.”

“I used to think that it was better to have too much than too little, but now I think if the too much was never supposed to be yours, you should just take what is yours and give the rest back.”

“Он убирает волосы с моего лба и громко плачет. Я никогда не слышала, чтобы он плакал. Даже когда умерла мама. Он сжимает мою руку с силой, о существовании которой в его старом теле я не подозревала, и вспоминаю, что я - это все, что у него есть, и что он опять, как и раньше, - весь мой мир. Кровь продолжает в спешке нестись по моему телу. Скорей, скорей, скорей. Мы всегда спешим. Может быть, я опять спешу. Может быть, мне еще не время уходить.”

“Seeming and being are not one and the same.”

“Two lost things that had survived the seas and arrived on a coastline. What did they do? They implanted themselves in the sand and grew into trees and lined the beaches. Sometimes a lot can come of being all washed up. You can really grow.”

“Hope like that, as I thought before, doesn’t make you a weak person. It’s hopelessness that makes you weak. Hope makes you stronger, because it brings with it a sense of reason. Not a reason for how or why they were taken from you, but a reason for you 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.”

“That somehow dreams are a blurred line between here and there, like a meeting room in a prison. You’re both in the same room, yet on different sides and really, in different worlds.”

“sometimes we have absolutely no idea where we are, we need the smallest clue to show us where to begin.”

“Our minds do unusual things sometimes, Tamara. When we’re looking for things it takes it upon itself to go down its own route. All we can do is follow”

“I suppose it’s easier to see the way out of anything when you’ve found your way out of that maze. When you’re stuck in the middle, in a series of dead-ends making circles, it’s difficult to make any sense of anything.”

“I also believe that when people are going through difficult situations in life... it causes them to search a lot more. They search life and search their soul. When you’re searching, you’re suddenly a lot more open to the world around you, to the possibilities, to things you never thought about before. — When you’re happy, you don’t question the world so much. When you’re lost, you question everything. The very reason why it is so essential to human self-discovery”

“She needed to talk, she needed to cry, she needed to vent all her frustrations and disappointments.”

“The first day of the rest of my life, and I’m not sure I want tobe here. I know I should be thanking somebody for this, but I reallydon’t feel like it. Instead, I wish they hadn’t bothered.”

“they worry about my sanity i join with them on that”

“Empty words almost echo within themselves”

“Every single time you crossed over for me and met me on my side. I realize now, I don't think I ever met you in the middle. And I don't think I ever once said that you for that.”

“Sometimes there is only one thing left to say, P. S. I Love You....”

“Not like a heart, which let people in without permission, held them in a special place she never had any say in and then yearned for them to remain there longer than they planned.”

“Alone because love wasone of those feelings that you could never have control of. And she neededto be in control. She had loved before, had been loved, had tasted what it wasto dream, and had felt what it was to dance on air. She had also learned whatit was to cruelly land back on the earth with a thud.”

“Most of all she loved that when she hugged him her head would rest neatly just below his chin, where she could feel his breath lightly blowing her hair and tickling her head.”

“well i think its quite obvious that if you're going to rely on something to carry your wishes, you might as well know where exactly it has come from and where it intends on going”

“life's kind of like a painting. A really bizarre, abstract painting. You could look at it and think that all it is, is a blur. And you could continue living your life thinking that all it is, is just 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. The 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.”

“So this is what you do when it all slows down and the minutes that tick by feel a little longer than before. You take your time. You breathe slowly. You open your eyes a little wider and look at everything. Take it all in. Rehash stories of old, remember people, times, and occasions gone by. Allow everything you see to remind you of something. Talk about those things. Find out the answers you didn’t know to yesterday’s crosswords. Slow down. Stop trying to do everything now, now, now. Hold up the people behind you for all you care, feel them kicking at your heels but maintain your pace. Don’t let anybody else dictate your speed.”

“I cant' believe Doris's hair is real too.''All but the colour. ...”

“Forty-three years old, he is handsome and he knows it, but it's not a view that is held with arrogance. His opinion on his looks are merely understood with the same logic he applies to tasting a fine wine. The grape was merely grown in the right place, under the right conditions. Some degree of nurturing and love mixed with later moments of being completely trampled on and walked all over.”

“Elizabeth’s hands flew to her mouth; tears filled her eyes with happinessas she realized he was fulfilling yet another of her and her mother’s intended activities.“Why are you fulfilling all of my mother’s dreams?” she asked, studyinghis face and searching for answers.“So you don’t run away like she did in search of them,” he replied, takingher hand. “Come on, join in!” he said, leaping around.”

“I thought that it was 'cause I deserved the best and he's out there. He's just with all the wrong women. And let me be clear. After CENTURIES of men looking at my tits in stead of my eyes and pinching my ass instead of shaking my hand, I now have the *DIVINE* right to stare at a man's BACKSIDE with vulgar, cheap appreciation if I want to!”

“So now, all alone or not, you gotta walk ahead. Thing to remember is if we're all alone, then we're all together in that too.”

“The important thing is not what we look like, but the role we play in ourbest 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 thecorrect height, age, or have the right hair color”

“There's no limit to what you can dream. You expect the unexpected, you believe in magic, in fairy tales, and in possibilities. Then you grow older and that innocence is shattered and somewhere along the way the reality of life gets in the way and you're hit by the realization that you can't be all you wanted to be, you just might have to settle for a little bit less.”

“Your heart can break at any age.”

“We each have our hiding places and we each put up with the little quirks of the people we love.”

“Now let me teach you another thing about my daughter. I love her very much but she has the ability to hide as expertly as a sock in a washing machine. No one knows where it goes, just as no one knows where she goes, but at least when she decides to come back, we're all here, waiting for her.”