It took courage to let things fall apart so beautifully.

She may have looked normal on the outside, but once you'd seen her handwriting you knew she was deliciously complicated inside.

In Madeleine's face was a stupidity Mitchell had never seen before. It was the stupidity of all normal people. It was the stupidity of the fortunate and the beautiful, of everybody who got what they wanted in life and so remained unremarkable.

There is a small window of opportunity for freckled girls to tan.

When you stood between somebody you loved and death, it was hard to be awake and it was hard to sleep.

The ideas for my books come about in two ways. There can be an intellectual idea that seems to be the reason for writing the book. [...] The other motive is unconscious. There is something deeply psychological and emotional that draws me to the material in the first place.

Some cities have fallen into ruin and some are built upon ruins but others contain their own ruins while still growing.