Books may well be the only true magic.

I heard a sigh, as though the books were breathing. I felt that this was where I belonged. This was where I lived.

No one knows you like a person with whom you've shared a childhood. No one will ever understand you in quite the same way.

He fell in love with the way she closed her eyes, long before he fell in love with her.

Young people believe that regret is something you will never feel if you simply do as you please, but sometimes it is a matter of degree.

There are some things, after all, that Sally Owens knows for certain: Always throw spilled salt over your left shoulder. Keep rosemary by your garden gate. Add pepper to your mashed potatoes. Plant roses and lavender, for luck. Fall in love whenever you can.

Maybe a hundred years ago our people should have run away from this place, I said... And then run from the next place and the next place and the place after that? You run once, what makes you think you won't have to run all the rest of your life?... We love moment to moment... Everything changes. One minute we are part of the river, and the next we are joined with the sea.