"have you ever been in love? horrible isn't it? it makes you so vulnerable. it opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. you build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...you give them a piece of you. they didn't ask for it. they did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. love takes hostages. it gets inside you. it eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. it hurts. not just in the imagination. not just in the mind. it's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. i hate love."

~ neil gaiman

"but embracing pain did not mean just giving way to it rather than fighting. you had to draw the pain inside of you and welcome it as a part of you. you must be able to smile and laugh with joy or sing while the worst of the pain still gripped you."

- in robert jordan's "knife of dreams"

"some in your place have failed not because they lacked the capacity for greatness, but because they stretched that capacity too thin, sprinting when they should have walked."

- siuan, in robert jordan's/brandon sanderson's "the gathering storm"

"the twisted iron pieces of a puzzle moved only in certain ways. move them in the right way, and the puzzle came apart. people could move in a thousand ways, sometimes in directions you never believed possible till it happened."

- in robert jordan's "knife of dreams"

"you're over-thinking... don't place some vague moral judgment on yourself based on what others might think. don't waste your energy."

- christian, in e.l. james' "fifty shades of grey"

"pretend something too long, and it could become truth."

- in robert jordan's "knife of dreams"

"you tell him there's no shame in tears. tell him to cry when tears are called for."

- faile, in robert jordan's "knife of dreams"