Jennifer Donnelly

“Come on you raver, you seer of visions, come on you painter, you piper, you prisoner, and shine...”

“One expects decent people to stand up for the good of all. Decent people shut their doors and hide behind them as decent people do. Massacres could never happen if it weren't for decent people.”

“For I have seen it and I have felt it and it is love, not death, that undoes us.”

“Meet me where the sky touches the sea. Wait for me where the world begins.”

“The rain comes down harder, darkness falls. We don't care. Together in our house, in the firelight, we are the world made small.”

“He who cannot endure the bad will not live to see the good.”

“It's a special key.''How so?''It has an L on it. L for love. See? It's the key to the universe, Dad.”

“As I turned to go, I nearly trod on the body of a young robin half hidden in the grass. Its wings were twisted and bent. Its body stiff and bloodied.'A hawk's work,' I thought, wondering if the robin had seen the brilliant blue of the sky and felt the sun on its back before its wings were broken.”

“They leave things behind sometimes, the guests. A bottle of scent. A crumpled handkerchief. A pearl button that fell off a dress and rolled under a bed. And sometimes they leave other sorts of things. Things you can't see. A sigh trapped in a corner. Memories tangled in the curtains. A sob fluttering against the windowpane like a bird that flew in and can't get back out. I can feel these things. They dart and crouch and whisper.”

“Hope is the crystal meth of emotions. It hooks you fast and kills you hard.”

“Writers are damned liars. Every single one of them.”

“But words are more powerful than anything.”

“Never take what's offered, always ask for more.”

“You can't argue with the dead, no matter what you say, they always have the last word.”

“And then I see them. In the glow of the flashlight, I see the corses. Stacks of them. Some are shriveled. Some are putrid. Most still have their clothes on. Not one has its head on. "No. No way. No way! This can't be. Fresh dead people? They said the bodies were two hundred years old. This is bad. Really bad. We've got to call someone. Frontline. Nightline. Anderson Cooper.”

“I will rain down silver and gold for you. I will shatter the black night, break it open, and pour out a million stars. Turn away from the darkness, the madness, the pain. Open your eyes and know that I am here. That I remember and hope. Open your eyes and look at the light.”

“And Robespierre, the Incorruptible, who loved us so much he cut off our heads so we would not be troubled by too many thoughts.”

“I need a boy who thinks with his big head, not his little one. Since they do not exist, I have fashioned my own.”

“And I knew in my bones that Emily Dickinson wouldn't have written even one poem if she'd had two howling babies, a husband bent on jamming another one into her, a house to run, a garden to tend, three cows to milk, twenty chickens to feed, and four hired hands to cook for. I knew then why they didn't marry. Emily and Jane and Louisa. I knew and it scared me. I also knew what being lonely was and I didn't want to be lonely my whole life. I didn't want to give up on my words. I didn't want to choose one over the other. Mark Twain didn't have to. Charles Dickens didn't.”

“I've always admired your rather formidable will, your refusal to back away from difficulties, but sometimes strength isn't about perseverance. Sometimes it's about knowing when to quit.”

“I think your vision gets better as you get older.”

“Revolutions come about when small things happen to small people.”

“Her grey eyes sparkled with passion as she spoke. Sid looked into them and for a second he glimpsed her soul. He saw what she was - fierce and brave. Upright. Impatient. And good. So good that she would sit covered in gore, shout at dangerous men, and keep a long, lonely vigil - all to save the likes of him. He realized she was a rare creature, as rare as a rose in winter.”

“Every heart is made of stories.”

“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.”

“DNA tells you all the secrets of life,’ he used to say. Except for one—how to live it.”

“On those nights, the words were for me alone. They came up unbidden from my heart. They spilled over my tongue and spilled out my mouth. And because of them, I, who was nothing and nobody, was a prince of Denmark, a maid of Verona, a queen of Egypt. I was a sour misanthrope, a beetling hypocrite, a conjurer's daughter, a mad and murderous king.”

“Happiness was useless to me. It was heartache that filled my purse. What happy man has need of Shakespeare?”

“For mad I may be, but I will never be convenient.”

“Little by little, the old world crumbled, and not once did the king imagine that some of the pieces might fall on him.”

“And then I remember this morning and I wonder if it really happened or if I dreamed it. It was nice. And weird. And tender. I'm not used to tender. It's a fossil, that word. Conditions changed and it died out. Like the woolly mammoth. It just couldn't live in the same world as dick box. Ho dog. Or wiener cousins.”

“Had you but seen it, I promise you, your high-minded principles would have melted like candle wax. Never would you have wished such beauty away.”

“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.”

“Go round cringing like a dog, Matt," he said, "and folks will treat you like one. Stand up like a man, and they'll treat you like a man." That was fine for Weaver, but I wondered sometimes, How exactly do you stand up like a man when you're a girl?”

“Weaver always says freedom is like Sloan's Liniment, always promising more than it delivers.”

“She was his soulmate, as much a part of him as the very flesh and bone that made him. She was with him, in him, in everything he did. She was everything he wanted from his life, the very measure of his dreams.”

“It's another sin. Worse than all the other ones, which are immediate, violent and hot...It's the eighth deadly sin. The one God left out, Hope.”

“She smells of her cooking and the perfume Eau d'Hadrien. My mother wore it, too. She used to cook, like Lili. Our house smelled of garlic and thyme instead of sadness.”

“Why is it that weeks and months and years go by so quickly, all in a blur, but moments last forever?”

“She's got a big belt around her hips. It has a shiny buckle with PRADA on it, which is Italian for insecure.”

“Beautiful people don't need coats. They've got their auras to keep them warm.”

“Make them care, Mattie,' she said softly. 'And don't you ever be sorry.'-Emily Wilcox”

“Because in a small dark room, a broken child lies on a filthy bed and stares up at a high window. He waits for me, too.And I—I who have failed at everything and have failed everyone—I must not, I cannot, I will not fail him.”

“I was only glad to be saved and never once thought to ask why.”

“I played a role. That is what actors do. But I played it too well. I went too far. And by the time I wanted to stop, to take a bow and leave the stage, it was too late.”

“But his words fall away. He looks confused. He looks flustered and sorry. Like you do when you run up to someone you think you know and take her arm and she turns around and you were wrong.”

“There is an advantage to be found in most everything that happens to you, even if it is not immediately apparent.”

“Yeah. Sure. My brother's dead. My mother's insane. Hey, let's have a crepe.”

“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.”

“The greenest of pastures are right here on earth.”