Quotes from Cecelia Ahern

There were hundreds of them spread across the floor, each telling its own tale of triumph or sadness, each letter representing a phase in her life. She had kept them all.

Nothing is never nothing. It's always something.

Tonight I'm happy. I will worry about tomorrow when tomorrow comes. But I'm getting there...

Note to self: Do not under any circumstances fall in love again.

Hope like that, as I thought before, doesn't make you a weak person. It's hopelessness that makes you weak. Hope makes you stronger, because it brings with it a sense of reason. Not a reason for how or why they were taken from you, but a reason for you to live. Because it's a maybe. A 'maybe someday things won't always be this shit.' And that 'maybe' immediately makes the shittiness better.

Sighs and silences and avoided conversations are just as important as the things you do talk about.

We said we would meet again but we made no arrangements. Not out of any bad feeling between us, but because I felt it had all been said, or not said but understood, and she probably did too. To know she was there was enough, and for her to know I was around was probably too. Sometimes that's all people ever really need. Just to know.

Life is made up of meetings and partings. People come into your life everyday, you say good morning, you say good evening, some stay for a few minutes, some stay for a few months, some a year, others a whole lifetime. No matter who it is, you meet and then you part.

Rosie: What the hell was that silence? Steph: It sounds like something I'd like. It sounded nice. Rosie: It was.

Her best friend was gone and nobody understood that no amount of makeup, fresh air or shopping was going to fill the hole in her heart.

Seeming and being are not one and the same.

But I can now understand why people read, why they like to get lost in somebody else's life. Sometimes I'll read a sentence and it will make me sit up, jolt me, because it is something that I have recently felt but never said out loud. I want to reach into the page and tell the characters that I understand them, that they're not alone, that I'm not alone, that it's ok to feel like this. And then the lunch bell rings, the book closes, and I'm plunged back into reality.

We each have our hiding places and we each put up with the little quirks of the people we love.

But where pain was, healing could come; where loneliness was, new relationships could be formed; where rejection was, new love could be found. It was a moment. And moments changed. She would have to live through the moment to get to the next.

I'm trying to make some sense out of the phrase "Everything happens for a reason," and I think I've figured out what the reason is—to piss me off.

life's kind of like a painting. A really bizarre, abstract painting. You could look at it and think that all it is, is a blur. And you could continue living your life thinking that all it is, is just a blur. But if you really look at it, really see it, focus on it, and use your imagination, life can become so much more. The painting could be of the sea, the sky, people,buildings, a butterfly on a flower, or anything except the blur you were once convinced it was.

Children are the ones that know exactly what's going on in the world, you know. They 'see' more than adults, 'believe' in more, are honest, and will always, 'always' let you know where you stand.

Then I realised that I was the god on this occasion. I had tried to help the bluebottle, but it wouldn't let me. And then I felt sorry for God because I understood his frustration. Sometimes when people offer a helping hand, it gets pushed away. People always want to help themselves first.

Deep down, underneath all his layers of stupidity, he's a really good man. He may act out far too many selfish thoughts, says all the wrong things at all the wrong times, but behind closed doors he's a best friend. I understand that he has idiotic tendencies and I can still love him for it. He may not be someone that you feel comfortable sitting next to at a dinner party but for me, he's someone that I feel comfortable sharing my life with.

We haven't lost everything, if we haven't lost our hope.

There is no advice that I can give you, you will just have to trust yourself that when the time comes, you'll make the right decision.

Her life in ink.

I loved him, you know, but I have a theory about love. I think that, however good it is, some love isn't meant to be for ever.

Have you ever not known something but known it at the same time?