"The written word is unforgiving. An so it should be. Unlike the spoken, it contains no inherent inflection. It allows neither for the fragmented, nor the fracture. It allows not for broken boozy whispers. It allows for slang, but only sparingly. It allows for patois, parsimoniously...But the problems of poor grammar, of stylessness, go beyond the mere aesthetic. It is more than just about looking and sounding right. It isn't about being superior, or pretentious, or pedantic. It is about meaning. Plain and simple. For that is its primary function. To be perspicuous. To take a string of ambiguous markings and give them sense and significance."

(Umapagan Ampikaipakan, When missing 'u' is not something to LOL about)

"She wondered what he knew, what he sensed in her. Think you're good-lookin'? Rose did not know if she was good-looking, though there were days, like today, when she was pleased enough. Recently she had applied for a passport and surprised herself by not knowing what to write on the form. Her hair was ordinary brown, but how to describe the mucky nothing of her eyes. Blueish-grey with gold flecks? A few green bits?

'What colour', she said to William, 'are my eyes?'"

(Anne Enright, What are you like?)

"By the River Piedra I sat down and wept. There is a legend that everything that falls into the waters of this river - leaves, insects, the feathers of birds - is transformed into the rocks that make the riverbed. If only I could tear out my heart and hurl it into the current, then my pain and longing would be over, and I could finally forget.

By the River Piedra I sat down and wept. The winter air chills the tears on my cheeks, and my tears fall into the cold waters that course past me. Somewhere, this river joins another, then another, until - far from my heart and sight - all of them merge with the sea.

May my tears run just far, that my love might never know that one day I cried for him. May my tears run just as far, that I might forget the River Piedra, ...

All love stories are the same."

(Paulo Coelho, By the River Piedra I sat down and wept)

After all of these times, these sentences still able to make me sigh...very deeply...

"The real courage is in living and suffering for what you believe."

(Christopher Paolini, Eragon)