We can help pave the roads of those around us, but we can't choose their direction.

I'd always thought I would feel like an animal released from its cage when my student days were finished, I felt more like a bird that had been pushed from its nest and told it must fly.

Even prisoners can escape if they have books.

Pain moves us forward, changing us into something else, something we need to be.

Arjun: ...the men are talking because you're beautiful.Sita: ...I would much rather they talk about me because I'm skilled.

Sometimes, Anu, we have to take actions that make us sad because it's the right thing to do for the future.

The only words free of suspicious motives will be the ones I find in books.

...we are all sorry when loss comes for us. The test of our character comes not in how many tears we shed but in how we act after those tears have dried.

Some people are so impoverished all they have is gold.

You mean we won't get to run through burning buildings?" I could see he wanted to laugh, but instead he watched me intently. "What? Why are you staring at me?" "I'm not staring. I'm observing."I smiled through my tears. "And what do you observe?"He brushed his lips against my ear. "A brave young woman who has always fought for what was right, even when it was unpopular. A woman who can't return to the land of her birth, but is wlcome to cross the seas and rebuild Alexandria in mine. And a woman who has suffered enough in Rome and deserves happiness for a change. Will you come to Mauretania and be my queen?"He drew back to look at me, but I held him closer. "Yes.""Just yes?"I nodded and pressed my lips against his.

When a storm comes, bamboo bends. It doesn't break.

We've all done things we'd rather keep in the dark. It's only by shedding light on them that our demons can disappear.

Grandmother was like an opal. You could never be sure which colors were really there and which were just tricks of the light.

such a short time. I am about to tell our barker,

our countrymen are starving, she is decorating herself with diamond aigrettes!

customers away. The Palais-Royal has become a veritable den of iniquity,

Look at Rose Bertin. From an ordinary seamstress to the milliner

After all, that's why we read historical fiction-to be transported to another time, and to be astonished at ancient people's lives and traditions, just as they would probably be astonished at ours.

Nothing is forever...nothing lasts.