There's a story... a legend, about a bird that sings just once in its life. From the moment it leaves its nest, it searches for a thorn tree... and never rests until it's found one. And then it sings... more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. And singing, it impales itself on the longest, sharpest thorn. But, as it dies, it rises above its own agony, to outsing the lark and the nightingale. The thorn bird pays its life for just one song, but the whole world stills to listen, and God in his heaven smiles.

Best of all she liked his eyes, such a translucent golden brown, and so laughing.

I escaped the torture of my childhood home by reading. To this day it is still one of my greatest pleasures.

When we press the thorn to our chest we know, we understand, and still we do it.

The bird with the thorn in its breast, it follows an immutable law; it is driven by it knows not what to impale itself, and die singing. At the very instant the thorn enters there is no awareness in it of the dying to come; it simply sings and sings until there is not the life left to utter another note. But we, when we put the thorns in our breasts, we know. We understand. And still we do it. Still we do it.

It's a dead give away of an inexperienced writer if every character speaks with the same voice

Perfection, in anything, is unbearably dull. Myself, I prefer a touch of imperfection.