Nicholas Sparks

“People will tell you most of the story… and I’ve learned that the part they neglect to tell you is often the most important part. People hide the truth because they’re afraid.”

“Please don't ask me to go with you, because if you do, I'll go. Please don't ask me to tell Frank about us, because i'll do that, too. Please don't ask me to give up my responsibilities or break up my family; I love you, and if you love me, too, then you just can't ask me to do these things. Because I don't trust myself enough to say no.”

“if they were meant to be together they would find a way to do it.”

“I think... that when it comes to us, anything is possible.”

“I wish we didn't live so far apart... You're kind of addicting.”

“A guy out there was meant to be the love of your life, your best friend, your soul mate, the one you can tell your dreams to. He'll brush the hair out of your eyes. Send you flowers when you least expect it. He'll stare at you during the movies, even though he paid $8 to see it. He'll call to say goodnight or just cause he's missing you. He'll look in your eyes and tell you, you're the most beautiful girl in the world, and for the first times in your life, you'll believe it.”

“The next time you're mad at me, talk to me,' he said. 'Don't shut me out. I don't like playing games. And by the way, I had a great time, too.”

“It hadn't been so long ago, yet sometimes she felt that she'd been an altogether different person back then.”

“As the warm air blew in the car, simple snapshots of the life they'd lived together surfaced in his mind; but as always, those images led inexorably to their final day together.”

“The young, brash and impatient, must always break the silence. It is a waste, for silence is pure. Silence is holy. It draws people together because only those who are comfortable with each other can sit with out speaking. This is the great paradox.”

“She turned the key, never taking her eyes fromhim,”

“I’ve lost someone, too,” he reminded her.“It’s not the same!” She squeezed the bridge of her nose, trying to stifle her tears. “I was so mean to him. I quit the piano! I blamed him for everything, and I didn’t say more than a few words to him for three years! Three years! And I can’t get those years back.But maybe if I hadn’t been so angry, he might not have gotten sick. Maybe I caused that extra… stress that did all this. Maybe it was me!”

“Love hurts. There is nothing as painful as heartbreak. But in order to learn to love again you must learn to trust again.”

“What was it, he wondered for the hundredth time, that enabled Pastor Harris to hear the answers in his heart? What did he mean when he said he felt God’s presence? Steve supposed he could ask Pastor Harris directly, but he doubted that would do any good. How could anyone explain such a thing? It would be like describing colors to someone blind from birth: The words might be understood, but the concept would remain mysterious and private.”

“I finished your song, she said. Our last song. And I want to play it for you.”

“It was, I remembered thinking, the most difficult walk anyone ever had to make. In every way, a walk to remember.”

“She'd preferred the uncertainty, if only because it allowed her to remember him the way he used to be. Sometimes, though, she wondered what he felt when he thought of that year they spent together, or if he ever marveled at what they'd shared, or even whether he thought of her at all.”

“The final stretch of drive ended at a small cottage nestled in a grove of ancient live oaks. The weathered structure, with chipping paint and shutters that had begun to blacken at the edges, was fronted by a small stone porch framed by white columns. Over the years, one of the columns had become enshrouded in vines, which climbed toward the roof. A metal chair sat at the edge, and at one corner of the porch, adding color to the world of green, was a small pot of blooming geraniums. But their eyes were drawn inevitably to the wildflowers. Thousands of them, a meadow of fireworks stretching nearly to the steps of the cottage, a sea of red and orange and purple and blue and yellow nearly waist deep, rippling in the gentle breeze. Hundreds of butterflies flitted about the meadow, tides of moving color undulating in the sun.”

“I gave you the best of me, he'd told her once, and with every beat of her son's heart, she knew he'd exactly done that.”

“Change isn't always for the best.”

“Dawson dera um pontapé na terra solta. "Quando se ama uma pessoa, devemos liberta-la. Certo?".Pela primeira vez os olhos dela dardejaram. "E se essa pessoa não quiser ser libertada, vai ser obrigada na mesma? É assim que vês a situação? Como uma espécie de cliché?" Agarrara-o pelo braço, cravando-lhe os dedos. "Nós não somos um cliché. Havemos de encontrar uma solução para que possa funcionar.”

“Love is always bestowed as a gift! freely, willingly, and without expectation.... We don't love to be loved, we love to love”

“That's why I loved being with you. We could do the simplest things, like toss starfish into the ocean and share a burger and talk and even then I knew that I was fortunate. Because you were the first guy who wasn't constantly trying to impress me. You accepted who you were, but more than that, you accepted me for me. And nothing else mattered-- not my family or your family or anyone else in the world. It was just us.”

“Everything around me makes me miss you.”

“And for just a fleeting moment, a tiny wisp of time that hung in the air like firefliesin summer skies, she wondered if she was in love with him again.”

“She wasn't, nor ever had been, under the illusion that marriage was a relationship characterized by endless bliss and romance. Throw any two people together, add the inevitable ups and downs, give the mixture a vigorous stir, and a few stormy arguments were inevitable, no matter how the couple loved each other.”

“Sometimes, things don't work out the way we want them to.”

“It's okay to be sad. Everyone gets sad now and then. Even me.”

“I'm not sure anyone's life turns out exactly the way they imagine. All we can do is to try to make the best of it. Even when it seems impossible.”

“Besides, every couple needs to argue now and then. Just to prove that the relationship is strong enough to survive it.”

“Everyone has crap in their background, everyone has things they wish they could undo. But most people don't go around doing their best to screw up their present lives because of it.”

“What the younger generation didn't understand was that the grass was greenest where it's watered..”

“Because in the end, and no matter how hard it is, acceptance helps people move on with the rest of their lives.”

“It was a life, she eventually concluded, that had been lived in the middle ground, where contentment and love were found in the smallest details of people's lives. It was a life of dignity and honor, not without sorrows yet fulfilling in a way that few experiences ever were.”

“There's a lot of magic between you too, ain't no denying that. And magic makes forgettin' hard.”

“Everyone wanted to believe that endless love was possible. She'd believed in it once too, back when she was eighteen. But she knew that love was messy, just like life. It took turns that people couldn't foresee or even understand, leaving a long trail of regret in its wake. And almost always, those regrets led to the kinds of what if questions that could never be answered.”

“Your going to come across people in your life that say all the right things at the right times. But in the end, it's always their actions you should judge them by. it's actions, not words, that matter.”

“You're a wonderful person, Jamie. You're beautiful, you're kind, you're gentle...you're everything that I'd like to be. If people don't like you, or they think you're strange, then that's their problem.”

“I cry to you, my Lord, my rock! Do not be deaf to me, for if you are silent, I shall go down to the pit like the rest. Hear my voice raised in petition as I cry to you for help, as I raise my hands, my Lord, toward your holy of holies.”

“No one in my family or my circle of friends had ever had to confront something like this. Jamie was seventeen, a child on the verge of womanhood, dying and still very much alive at the same time. I was afraid, more afraid than I'd ever been, not only for her, but for me as well. I lived in fear of doing something wrong, of doing something that would offend her. Was it okay to ever get angry in her presence? Was it okay to talk about the future anymore?”

“Aren't you frightened?" Somehow I expected her to say no, to say something wise like a grownup would, or to explain that we can't presume to understand the Lord's plan. She looked away. "Yes," she finally said, "I'm frightened all the time." "Then why don't you act like it?""I do. I just do it in private.""Because you don't trust me?""No," she said, "because I know you're frightened, too.”

“It's hard for me to talk to her. All I can do when I look at her is think about the day when I won't be able to. So I spend all my time at school thinking about her, wishing I could see her right then, but when I get to her house, I don't know what to say.”

“everyone - you included - is on her best behavior in the beginning of a relationship. Sometimes little quirks turn out to be big ones, and the big advantage that women have - sometimes the only advantage - is their intuition.”

“Where does a story truly begin? In life, there are seldom clear-cut beginnings, those moments when we can, in looking back, say that everything started. Yet there are moments when fate intersects with our daily lives, setting in motion a sequence of events whose outcome we could never have foreseen.”

“Long-term relationship - the ones that matter - are all about weathering the peaks and the valleys.”

“So that's the ghost you been running from.”

“Amanda: This weekend was wonderful, but it isn't real life. It was more like a honeymoon, and after a while the excitement will wear off. We can tell ourselves it won't happen, we can make all the promises we want, but it's inevitable, and after that you'll never look at me the way you do now. I won't be the woman you dream about, or the girl you used to love. And you won't be my long-lost love, my one true thing anymore, either. You'll be someone my kids despise because you ruined the family, and you'll see me for who I really am. In a few years, I'll simply be a woman pushing fifty with three kids who might or might not hate her, and who might end up hating herself because of all this. And in the end, you'll end up hating her, too.Dawson: That's not true.Amanda: But it is. Honeymoons always come to an end.Dawson: Being together isn't about a honeymoon. It's about the real you and me. I want to wake up with you beside me in the mornings, I want to spend my evenings looking at you across the dinner table. I want to share every mundane detail of my day with you and hear every detail of yours. I want to laugh with you and fall asleep with you in my arms. Because you aren't just someone I loved back then. You were my best friend, my best self, and I can't imagine giving that up again. You might not understand, but I gave you the best of me, and after you left, nothing was ever the same. I know you're afraid, and I'm afraid, too. But if we let this go, if we pretend none of this ever happened, then I'm not sure we'll ever get another chance. We're still young. We still have time to make this right.Amanda: We're not that young anymore-Dawson: But we are. We still have the rest of our lives.Amanda: I know. That's why I need you to do something for me.Dawson: Anything.Amanda: Please...don't ask me to go with you, because if you do, I'll go. Please don't ask me to tell Frank about us, because I'll do that, too. Please don't ask me to give up my responsibilities or break up my family. I love you, and if you love me, too, then you just can't ask me to do these things. Because I don't trust myself enough to say no.”

“Don't take my advice. Or anyone's advice. Trust yourself. For good or for bad, happy or unhappy, it's your life, and what you do with it has always been entirely up to you.”

“Life was messy. Always had been and always would be and that was just the way it was, so why bother complaining? You either did something about it or you didn’t, and then you lived with the choice you made.”

“It's hard at times, but it makes a kid strong in ways that most people can't understand. Teaches them that even though people are left behind, new ones will inevitable take their place; that every place has something good - and bad - to offer. It makes a kid grow up fast.”