maturity meant thinking about risk long before you pondered the reward, and that success and happiness in life were as much about avoiding mistakes as making your mark into the world.

He looked at her. She was pretty still, with thick hair and soft eyes, and she moved so gracefully that it almost seemed as though she were gliding. He'd seen beautiful women before, though, women who caught his eye, but to his mind, they usually lacked the traits he found most desirable. Traits like intelligence, confidence, strength of spirit, passion, traits that inspired others to greatness, traits he aspired to himself.

It's your eyes. They're ... more serious than they used to be. Like they've seen things they shouldn't have.

Yet I have come to believe that while the past is unchangeable, our perceptions of is are malleable.

He often felt that too many people lived their lives acting and pretending,wearing masks and losing themselves in the process.

In all love stories the theme is love and tragedy, so by writing these types of stories, I have to include tragedy.

Life passes by now like the scenery outside a car window. I breathe and eat and sleep as I always did, but there seems to be no great purpose in my life that requires active participation on my part...I do not know where I am going or when I will get there.