"he was afraid of defiling the love which filled his soul."
— Leo Tolstoy (Anna Karenina)

"…[I]f they hadn’t both been pretending, but had had what is called a heart-to-heart talk, that is, simply told each other just what they were thinking and feeling, then they would just have looked into each other’s eyes, and Constantine would only have said: ‘You’re dying, dying, dying!’ – while Nicholas would simply have replied: ‘I know I’m dying, but I’m afraid, afraid, afraid!’ That’s all they would have said if they’d been talking straight from the heart. But it was impossible to live that way, so Levin tried to do what he’d been trying to do all his life without being able to, what a great many people could do so well, as he observed, and without which life was impossible: he tried to say something different from what he thought, and he always felt it came out false, that his brother caught him out and was irritated by it."
— Leo Tolstoy (Anna Karenina)

"Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive."
— Josephine Hart (Damage)

"Having then for the first time clearly understood that before every man, and before himself, there lay only suffering, death, and eternal oblivion, he had concluded that to live under such conditions was impossible; that one must either explain life to oneself so that it does not seem to be an evil mockery by some sort of devil, or one must shoot oneself.

But he had done neither the one nor the other, yet he continued to live, think, and feel, had even at that very time got married, experienced many joys, and been happy whenever he was not thinking of the meaning of his life.

What did that show? It showed that he had lived well, but thought badly."
— Leo Tolstoy

"And that's when Anna realized that what the wolf had been asking Bran for was death.
Impulsively, Anna stepped away from Charles. She put a knee on the bench she'd been sitting on and reached over the back to close her hand on Asil's wrist, which was lying across the back of the pew.
He hissed in shock but didn't pull away. As she held him the scent of wilderness, of sickness, faded. He stared at her, the whites of his eyes showing brightly while his irises narrowed to small bands around his black pupil.
"Omega," he whispered, his breath coming harshly."
— Patricia Briggs (Cry Wolf)

"He said that we belonged together because he was born with a flower and I was born with a butterfly and that flowers and butterflies need each other for survival."
— Gemma Malley (The Declaration)

"Art is bad when ‘you see the intent and get put off.’ (Goethe) In Tolstoy one is unaware of the intent, and sees only the thing itself.
from the book, On Retranslating A Russian Classic Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy"
— Joel Carmichael

"Because no one needs to live for ever. I think that sometimes you can outstay your welcome.
"
— Gemma Malley (The Declaration)

"Charles to Anna:

If it would benefit you, I would kill every wolf here. But there are things that you need to do- and interfering with that is not protecting, not in my book. The best way for me to protect you is to encourage you to be able to protect yourself. "
— Patricia Briggs (Hunting Ground)

"Surplus meant unnecessary. Not required.
You couldn’t be a Surplus if you were needed by someone else. You couldn’t be a Surplus if you were loved.
"
— Gemma Malley (The Declaration)

""I'm trying..." How could I put it? "I'm trying to get far enough down the line so that I can remember." I stopped, then continued: "so that I can remember without the pain killing me"

And the days were stacking up. And weeks. And months. It was now almost the middle of June and he'd died in February, but I still felt like I'd just woken from a horrible dream, that I was suspended in that stunned, paralyzed state between sleep and reality where I was grasping for, but couldn't get a handle on normality."
— Marian Keyes (Anybody Out There?)

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
"
— Leo Tolstoy

"It will pass, it will all pass, we're going to be so happy! If our love could grow any stronger it would grow stronger because there is something horrifying in it,"
— Leo Tolstoy

"Haven't you heard the saying 'absence makes the heart grow fonder'?" - Emily
"Haven't you heard the saying 'SHUT UP'?" - Martha"
— Emily and Martha Maxwell

"'I love you Anna Covey,' he said, his voice barely audible. And slowly, clumsily, he leant forward, and his lips found hers, and Anna felt him kiss her awkwardly, she knew that she wasn't a Surplus any more. And nor was Peter."
— Gemma Malley (The Declaration)

""I am just a girl standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her.""
— Anna Scott Julia Roberts

"If goodness has causes, it is not goodness; if it has effects, a reward, it is not goodness either. So goodness is outside the chain of cause and effect."
— Leo Tolstoy