I've never been shot, but this probably what it feels like, that second of nothingness right before the pain catches up to the bullet.

You lost your wife, Douglas. My heartbreaks for you, it really does. But I lose my husband every day, all over again. And I don’t even get to mourn.

There are no happy endings, just happy days, happy moments. The only real ending is death, and trust me, no one dies happy. And the price of not dying is that things change all the time, and the only thing you can count on is that there's not a thing you can do about it.

You can sit up here, feeling above it all while knowing you’re not, coming to the lonely conclusion that the only thing you can ever really know about anyone is that you don’t know anything about them at all.

Obviously it's easier when I' m doing the adapting myself. But my feeling is, your potential upside far outweighs the downside. Ultimately, they [moviemakers] can't change your book. Your book remains on the shelf the way you wrote it. If they make a great movie of your book, then you have the equivalent of millions and millions of dollars of advertising for your book. If the movie's not that good, that doesn't mean the book's not good. It doesn't change what you've already written. It has the potential to reach more people.

Sometimes you walk past a pretty girl on the street there's something beyond beauty in her face, something warm and smart and inviting, and in the three seconds you have to look at her, you actually fall in love, and in those moments, you can actually know the taste of her kiss, the feel of her skin against yours, the sound of her laugh, how she'll look at you and make you whole. And then she's gone, and in the five seconds afterwards, you mourn her loss with more sadness than you'll ever admit to.

Forgiveness has its comforts, but it can never give you back what you've lost.