There is no cosmic scale on which you can weigh your actions; you learn too late what choices ruin the fragile balance.

There is nothing worse than silence, strung like heavy beads on too delicate a conversation.

If she spoke, she would tell him the truth: she was not okay at all, but horribly empty, now that she knew what it was like to be filled.

Violence up close has a smell. Like copper blood and charcoal burning.

remember that every fire will burn itself out, even without your help.

But still, it looked completely natural, as if we had been kissing at the ends of sentences for ages, while the rest of the world was still hung up on punctuation.

Fiction allows for moral questioning, but through the back door. Personally, I like books that make you think - books you're still wondering about three days after you finish them; books you hand to a friend and say "Read this, so we can talk about it."