The Storyteller

Forgiving isn't something you do for someone else. It's something you do for yourself. It's saying, 'You're not important enough to have a stranglehold on me.' It's saying, 'You don't get to trap me in the past. I am worthy of a future.

History isn't about dates and places and wars. It's about the people who fill the spaces between them.

Inside each of us is a monster; inside each of us is a saint. The real question is which one we nurture the most, which one will smite the other.

Power isn't about doing something terrible to someone who's weaker than you, Reiner. It's having the strength to do something terrible, and choosing not to.

That's the paradox of loss: How can something that's gone weigh us down so much?

That's why we read fiction, isn't it? To remind us that whatever we suffer, we're not the only ones?

It does'nt matter who forgives you, if you're the one who can't forget.

The person may have a scar, but it also means they have a story

I don't know what it is about death that makes it so hard. I suppose it's the one-sided communication; the fact that we never get to ask our loved one if she suffered, if she is happy wherever she is now...if she is somewhere. It's the question mark that comes with death that we can't face, not the period.

It doesn't matter what it is that leaves a hole inside you. It just matters that it’s there.

Sometimes, all it takes to become human again is someone who can see you that way, no matter how you present on the surface.

If you've lived through it, you already know there are no words that will ever come close to describing it, and if you didn't - you will never understand.

What is the point of trying to put down on paper emotions that are too complex, too huge, too overwhelming to be confined by an alphabet? Love isn't the only word that fails. Hate does, too.

What he did was wrong. He doesn't deserve your love. But he does deserve your forgiveness, because otherwise he will grow like a weed in your heart until it's choked and overrun. The only person who suffers, when you squirrel away all that hate, is you.

The weapons an author has at her disposal are flawed. There are words that feel shapeless and overused. Love, for example. I could write the word love a thousand times and it would mean a thousand different things to different readers.

The only monsters I have ever known were men.

I don't believe in God. But sitting there, in a room full of those who feel otherwise, I realize that I do believe in people. In their strength to help each other, and to thrive in spite of the odds, I believe that the extraordinary trumps the ordinary, any day. I believe that having something to hope for -- even if it's just a better tomorrow -- is the most powerful drug on this planet.

Even the most beautiful things can be toxic.

People have to experience things that terrify them. If they don't, how will they ever come to appreciate safety?

Sometimes all you need to live one more day is a good reason to stick around.

If history has a habit of repeating itself, doesn't someone have to stay behind to shout out a warning?

sometimes words are not big enough to contain all the feelings you are trying to pour into them.

I pointed to the wound. "It's missing," I said. My grandmother smiled, and that was all it took for me to stop seeing the scar, and to recognize her again. "Yes," she said. "But see how much of me is left?

The only person who suffers, when you squirrel alway all that hate, is you.

Be kind to others before you take care of yourself; make whoever you're with feel like they matter.

Fiction comes in all shapes and sizes. Secrets,lies,stories. We all tell them. Sometimes,because we hope to entertain. Sometimes,because we need to distract. And sometimes, because we have to.

My brother believed in all sorts of mythical creatures: pixies, dragons, werewolves, honest men.

Loneliness is a mirror, and recognizes itself.

She became whoever she needed to be to survive,but she never let anyone else define her.