“Life is a disease: sexually transmitted, and invariably fatal.”

“You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.”

“Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?”

“Remember: the time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself. Life's cruelest irony.”

“Not everything is about you.”

“Is this the part where you say, "If I hurt her, you'll kill me?"”

“All grown-ups were once children, but only a few of them remember it.”

“You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.”

“Fear cuts deeper than swords.”

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”

“To define is to limit.”

“Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed.”

“Reader's Bill of Rights”

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”

“Without pain, how could we know joy? This is an old argument about suffering whose stupidity and lack of sophistication could be plumbed for centuries, but suffice it to say that the existence of broccoli does not in any way affect the taste of chocolate.”

“I've never been lonely. I've been in a room — I've felt suicidal. I've been depressed. I've felt awful, awful beyond all, but I never felt that one other person could enter that room and cure what was bothering me, or that any number of people could enter that room. In other words, loneliness is something I've never been bothered with because I've always had this terrible itch for solitude. It's being at a party, or at a stadium full of people cheering for something, that I might feel loneliness. I'll quote Ibsen: 'The strongest men are the most alone.' I've never thought, 'Well, some beautiful blonde will come in here and give me a fuck-job, rub my balls, and I'll feel good.' No, that won't help. You know the typical crowd: 'Wow, it's Friday night, what are you going to do? Just sit there?' Well, yeah. Because there's nothing out there. It's stupidity. Stupid people mingling with stupid people. Let them stupidify themselves. I've never been bothered with the need to rush out into the night. I hid in bars because I didn't want to hide in factories. That's all. Sorry for all the millions, but I've never been lonely. I like myself. I'm the best form of entertainment I have. Let's drink more wine!”

“That's the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.”

“Nobody likes being alone that much. I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all. It just leads to disappointment.”

“Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell.”

“I am not sure exactly what heaven will be like, but I know that when we die and it comes time for God to judge us, he will not ask, "How many good things have you done in your life?" Rather he will ask, "How much love did you put into what you did?"”

“It is so hard to leave—until you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world.”

“Two people in love, alone and isolated from the world. That's beautiful.”

“Everything is possible. The impossible just takes longer.”

“I have a theory that selflessness and bravery aren't all that different.”

“Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.”

“I have found the paradox that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.”

“For you, a thousand times over.”

“Malachi scowled. "I don't remember the Clave inviting you into the Glass City, Magnus Bane."”

“Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.”

“Many boys will bring you flowers. But someday you'll meet a boy who will learn your favorite flower, your favorite song, your favorite sweet. And even if he is too poor to give you any of them, it won't matter because he will have taken the time to know you as no one else does. Only that boy earns your heart.”

“People aren't either wicked or noble. They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict.”

“That's always seemed ridiculous to me that people want to be around someone because they're pretty. It's like picking your breakfast cereal based on color instead of taste.”

“I don't trust people who don't love themselves and tell me, 'I love you.' There is an African saying: 'Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.'”

“It's a metaphor. You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don't give it the power to do its killing.”

“Let everything happen to you.”

“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.”

“Let there be spaces in your togetherness, and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love; let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: for the pillars of the temple stand apart, and the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.”

“Read, read, read. Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.”

“There are two motives for reading a book: one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.”

“"I am a man," he told her, "and men do not consume pink beverages. Get thee gone, woman, and bring me something brown."”

“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.”

“To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”

“The nicest thing for me is sleep, then at least I can dream.”

“"I might be in love with you," he says, smiling a little. "I'm waiting until I'm sure to tell you, though."”

“If you're looking for sympathy you'll find it between shit and syphilis in the dictionary.”

“Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.”

“Religion has convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. He has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do, and if you do any of them he has a special place full of fire, smoke, torture and anguish where he will send you to live and suffer forever.”

“You don't love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.”

“Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don't be sorry.”

“We live and breathe words. It was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone. They could be honest with me, and I with them. Reading your words, what you wrote, how you were lonely sometimes and afraid, but always brave; the way you saw the world, its colors and textures and sounds, I felt, I felt the way you thought, hoped, felt, dreamt. I felt I was dreaming and thinking and feeling with you. I dreamed what you dreamed, wanted what you wanted, and then I realized that truly I just wanted you.”