At difficult times of my life, books have been an incredible comfort. When I was 12, I changed schools and my parents split up. It was then that I became addicted to reading. A great writer can attach themselves to your mind and heart, and you feel you understand the world better. As long as you have the capacity to read, you needn't be alone any more. I remember thinking as a child, "If I could give one person the comfort I keep getting from books, then I want to write."

What else is life from the time you were born but a struggle to matter, at least to someone?

You were trying to tell me something and I was trying to tell you something else. We didn't trust each other and that was reason enough to make each of us right.

The peculiar striations that define someone's personality are too numerous to know, no matter how close the observer. A person we think we know can suddenly become someone else when previously hidden strands of his character are called to the fore by circumstance.

I used to be a child. It came naturally to me. I was an adult for a time, too. That came less naturally.

Charisma will sustain a relationship only in the way that strong coffee first thing in the morning will sustain a career.

You would love the way he sees you. He uses you as a weapon against himself and not merely because you did