All the lessons you need to learn in life, he said, will be taught to you by your enemy.

Orphans are the only ones who get to choose their fathers, and they love them twice as much.

The next day, she was silent. For breakfast, she murdered an onion and served it raw.

. . . nobody every taught you loyalty . . .

I am a champion standing over the shadow of my former self.

Today, tomorrow," she said. "A day is nothing. A day is just a match you strike after the ten thousand matches before it have gone out.

The urge to create a fictional narrative is a mysterious one, and when an idea comes, the writer's sense of what a story wants to be is only vaguely visible through the penumbra of inspiration.

Use your imagination only on the future, never on the present or the past.

A good story feels both surprising and inevitable, fresh and familiar.

[I]n communism, you'd threaten a dog into compliance, while in capitalism, obedience is obtained through bribes.

But people do things to survive, and then after they survive, they can't live with what they've done.

I became intent on saving him through showing him that he was loved.

No one referred toFearghus the Destroyer as the life of anyone’s party.

When the Woolworth's-Hot-Fudge-Sundae switch goes on, then I know I really have something.

Great eagerness in the pursuit of wealth, pleasure, or honor, cannot exist without sin.

Chinese buildings are like American buildings, with big footprints. People don't care about daylight or fresh air.

I play music because I love it and I'll keep playin' till I'm old.

In all the setbacks of your life as a believer, God is plotting for your joy.

If we have a thousand bamboo spears, there's nothing to worry about a war with the Soviet Union.

There are some that only employ words for the purpose of disguising their thoughts.

Live as if your prayers are to be answered.