“To plan is to hope … without feeling passive.”

“I recall his somber eyes during that last, private conversation. His eyes and his words, far too wise for a boy of ten: only time will tell, Lia. In the end, I suppose it will.”

“You are what what you eat eats.”

“Literature, like magic, has always been about the handling of secrets, about the pain, the destruction, and the marvelous liberation that can result when they are revealed. Telling the truth when the truth matters most is almost always a frightening prospect. If a writer doesn't give away secrets, his own or those of the people he loves; if she doesn't court disapproval, reproach, and general wrath, whether of friends, family, or party apparatchiks; if the writer submits his work to an internal censor long before anyone else can get their hands on it, the result is pallid, inanimate, a lump of earth.”

“For as long as I could remember, I had been apologizing for existing, for trying to be who I was, to live the life I was meant to lead.”

“No, she felt homesick, not for a place, but for a time. Maybe it wasn't homesickness at all. Maybe it was timesickness. She just missed those days when she was younger - seven, six, five, four years old - when she didn't know so much about the world. She missed, most of all, her mother.”

“She liked the word ineffable because it meant a feeling so big or vast that it could not be expressed in words. And yet, because it could not be expressed in words, people had invented a word to express it, and that made Liesl feel hopeful, somehow.”

“Love with all your heart and show kindness in all your actions.”