You can't live your life to suit other people. The harder you try, the more restrictions they'll put on you just for the fun of seeing you jump through their hoops.

What are you looking at?" Jordan demanded finally, watching her. "A dragon." When he looked bewildered she lifted her arm and pointed to the sky in the southeast. "Right there—that cloud—what do you see when you look at it?" "A fat cloud." Alexandra rolled her eyes at him. "What else do you see?" He was quiet for a moment studying the sky. "Five more fat clouds and three thin ones.

Clayton," she said softly, her voice threaded with tears, "when Vanessa asked about my accomplishments tonight, I forgot to mention that I do have one. And it's--it's so splendid that it compensates for my lack of all the others." Stephen and Clayton grinned at each other, neither of them hearing the emotion that clogged her voice. "What splendid accomplishments is that, little one?" Clayton asked. Her shoulders hunched forward and began to shake. "I made you love me," she whispered brokenly. "Somehow, some way, I actually made you love me.

Some of the most unkind,judgmental people I've ever known go to church every Sunday and read the Bible. I don't know how some people are able to disassociate their own cruelty and shortcomings from their religious obligations and convictions, but many are able to do that.

They’re going to ask what you said. And if I tell Mr. Twindell you said heaven will be like this, he’ll be very disappointed. He’s counting, you know, on gold streets and angels and horses with wings.” “I see where that could be a problem,” Ian agreed, and he tenderly laid his hand against his son’s cheek. “In that case, you can tell him I said this is almost heaven.

A lie is an affront to the soul, as well as an insult to the intelligence of the person to whom one lies.

How foolish to yearn to ask the very person who'd caused the pain to heal it