You are more likely to find three TVs inside a randomly selected house than you are to find a single book that is or was not read to pass an exam, to please God, or to be a better cook.

She supposed they were imperfections, those marks, but they didn't feel that way to her; they were a history, cut into his body: the map of a life of endless war.

Your marks don’t matter when your radiance is overwhelming. When we’re our best selves we forget all those imperfections and appreciate beauty for how it is.

The most important thing for any con artist is never to think like a mark. Marks think they can get something for nothing. Marks think they can get what they don’t deserve and could never deserve. Marks are stupid and pathetic and sad. Marks think they’re going to go home one night and have the girl they’ve loved since they were a kid suddenly love them back. Marks forget that whenever something’s too good to be true, that’s because it’s a con.

If ever sorrow and suffering set their profaning marks on the youth and beauty of Miss Fairlie’s face, then, and then only, Anne Catherick and she would be the twin-sisters of chance resemblance, the living reflections of one another.

Your child is least interested in what the report card says. All that matters to him / her is what you say on seeing the report card.