Can you trust me, he said. Not will you. Can you.Can I trust him?What do I have to lose?

The train is roaring toward you and the villain is twirling his moustache and you're fussing that he's tied you to the tracks with the wrong kind of rope.

I wondered what you'd have on the side with a plate of Deep Fried Anxiety. Pickles? Coleslaw? Potato-strychnine mash?

The Lone Ranger of vampires. Did that make me Tonto?

Charlie is one of the big good guys in my universe.

I'd always had a guilty preference for fiction. Since I seemed now to be living fiction, this proved to have been an entirely reasonable choice.

What this world doesn't have is the three-wishes, go-to-the-ball-and-meet-your-prince, happily-ever-after kind of magic. We have all the mangling and malevolent kinds. Who *invented* this system?

You can be a really nasty, selfish little jerk when you're scared enough. I was scared enough.

The most serious drawback to the telling-nothing approach is that it made that much more of a mystery of what had happened, and the nature of gossip abhors a vacuum of the unexplained.

When you're feeding the second coachload of tourists that day you aren't thinking about the birthday party for fifty next week.

There are always cats around Charlie's, but they are usually refugees seeking asylum from the local rat population, and rather desperately friendly.

The memory of how he felt when he cared about her was going to be the most painful thing after he began to hate her.

A friend might well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

If you're dating the quarterback and then you go out with the hockey player, you just go to the hockey games. I don't think I'll still go to the football games.

The young are not afraid of telling the truth.

Anger is a prelude to courage.

The only unfair fight is the one you lose.

If you would get a contented life, do not grasp too much of the world, do not take in more of the business of the world than God calls you to.

You're never terrified when you say what you mean - are you?

Worship is at the center of everything that the church believes, practices, and seeks to accomplish

And over it all, the butterflies swarmed, like a million yellow-pettalled flowers dancing on swirling winds.