Eating connects us to our histories as much as it connects our souls to our bodies, our bodies to the earth.

The aristocrats had to force them to do their jobs. After all, human beings are not badgers. We aren't molded to stoop.

Malibu: With sounds of waves crashing, and the ocean at the doorstep, you feel like you are hours away from civilization. And with L.A. traffic, YOU ARE.

Lillie woke to darkness an instant before a large warm hand clamped down over her mouth…

We look for pretty girls we can say bad things to. No one shows up.

How exactly does one break the news to her husband that she's standing in a closet with the dead body of one of their dinner guests?

You have to be a little bad to make history.

Take a job, do it for ten years and work at it, and you'll succeed. Can I just add, take a job that you enjoy. If you don't enjoy the job, it's going to be a decade of hell.

Let this be your wall of brass, to have nothing on your conscience, no guilt to make you turn pale.

I got a huge knot in my stomach because if Antarctica could talk, it would be saying only one thing: you don't belong here. (277)

Commonsense lets us down, because commonsense evolved in a world where nothing moves very fast, and nothing is very small or very large; the mundane world of the familiar.

There are some elements in life - above all, sexual pleasure - about which it isn't necessary to have a position.