Cutting for Stone Quotes

Roses would be annoying weeds if the blooms never withered and died. Beauty resides in the knowledge that it doesn’t last.

Maybe it was written on my face that I'd become aware of human complexity - that's a kinder word than "deceit".

When she walked away I felt the weight of what she left unsaid. I wanted to call after her, Ma! You have it all wrong. But just as she kept her thoughts to herself, I was learning to do the same. This was what growing up was about: hide the corpse, don't bare your heart, do make assumptions about the motives of others. They're certainly doing all these things to you.

Success is not money! Success is you are fully loving what you are doing. That only is success!

... How we treat the least of out brethren, how we treat the peasant suffering with volvulus, that's the measure of this country. Not our fighter planes or tanks, or how big the Emperor's palace happens to be ...

All my ghosts had vanished; the retribution that they sought had been exacted. I had nothing more to give and nothing to fear.

The oaks and maples outside the window of his room are wild men with their heads on fire. He shuts his eyes, but the view inside his eyelids is the same nightmare. His nerves are lancinating cables under his skin that send jolts of electricity to his muscles. He is so tremulous that when he brings a glass of water to his lips, he has spilled most of it before he can take a sip. He pukes his insides out, till he imagines the lining of his stomach is smooth and shiny like a copper pot. But the impulse to run is gone. He has put one or perhaps two oceans between him and the place he flees.

In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

The world turns on our every action, and our every omission, whether we know it or not.

All possibilities resided within me, and they required me to be here. If I left, what would be left of me?

I believe in black holes. I believe that as the universe empties into nothingness, past and future will smack together in the last swirl around the drain.

We don’t have children to fulfill our dreams. Children allow us to let go of the dreams we were never meant to fulfill.

Her skills were so rare, so needed for the poorest of the poor, and even at times in the royal palace, that she felt valued. Wasn't that the definition of home? Not where you are from, but where you are wanted?

Fiction is the great lie that tells the truth about how the world lives!

Sometimes we have to “live the question,” not push for the answer.