“The chuckle is a perfectly acceptable form of laughter.”

“She gave me the slow nod women use to indicate that they understand our pain, they admire the courage with which we handle it, and they're absolutely certain that it's all our fault.”

“Life is a gift. If we don't live it well, we are being ungrateful. And we have to love the ones who journey with us." (A Nail Through the Heart)”

“I let one of the men rename me. A man gave me the name Rose – you didn’t know that, did you, Poke?…He said, this man, he said that Kwan was too hard to remember, even though it’s a good name and it means ‘spirit,’ and that the rose was the queen of flowers and I was the queen of Patpong.” She laughs, rough as a cough. “The queen of Patpong. A kingdom of whores and viruses. Death with a smile.”

“Almost everyone is overconfident--except the people who are depressed, and they tend to be realists.”

“As a general principle, people feel more responsible for their actions than they do for their inactions. If we are going to err at something, we would rather err by failing to act.”

“Those dreaming of the perfect match are outnumbered by those who don't really want it at all, though perhaps they can't admit it. After all, our culture makes individual freedom, autonomy and fulfillment the very highest values, and thoughtful people know deep down that any love relationship at all means the loss of all three. You can say, 'I want someone who will accept me just as I am,' but in your heart of hearts you know that you are not perfect, that there are plenty of things about you that need to be changed, and that anyone who gets to know you up close and personal will want to change them.”