A birth is not really a beginning. Our lives at the start are not really our own but only the continuation of someone else's story.

But she had that laugh, and the sound of it was so beautiful that when you heard it, it was as if your eyes saw her through your ears and she was transformed.

There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner.

I still believe in stories. I still forget myself when I am in the middle of a good book. Books are for me, it must be said, the most important thing.

The tears I gratified him with were fake ones. Ones that set off my green eyes the way diamonds set off emeralds. And it worked. If you dazzled a man with green eyes, he will be so hypnotized that he won’t notice there is someone inside the eyes spying on him. – Vida Winters Page 268

She could not read a book for fear of the feelings she might find in it.

I know there are people who don't read fiction at all, and I find it hard to understand how they can bear to be inside the same head all the time.