I found out early that you can throw yourself away, missing what you've lost.

Some people are little Chernobyls, shimmering with silent, spreading poison: get anywhere near them and every breath you take will wreck you from the inside out.

I wanted to tell her that being loved is a talent too, that it takes as much guts and as much work as loving; that some people, for whatever reason, never learn the knack

Her forehead was a maze of anxious little grooves, from a lifetime of wondering about whether everyone within range was OK.

A bore or an uggo might manage not to get up anyone's nose, but if a girl's got brains and looks and personality, she's going to piss someone off, somewhere along the way.

Don't you ever feel that - that you just need to get away? From everything? That it's all too much?

I hate nostalgia, it's laziness with prettier accessories.

We think about mortality so little, these days, except to flail hysterically at it with trendy forms of exercise and high-fiber cereals and nicotine patches.

The thing about being a mystery writer, what marks a mystery writer out from a chick lit author or historical fiction writer, is that you always find a mystery in every situation.

I don't do that kind of negativity. If you put your energy into thinking about how much the fall would hurt, you're already halfway down.

I had been right: freedom smelled like ozone and thunderstorms and gunpowder all at once, like snow and bonfires and cut grass, it tasted like seawater and oranges.

Always be like a water. Float in the times of pain or dance like waves along the wind which touches its surface.

The awful penalty of success is the haunting dread of subsequent failure.

Are guilt and regret not messages from inside of us, letting us know that our moral compasses have been recalibrated and are pointing in the right direction?

Because of the lack of education on AIDS, discrimination, fear, panic, and lies surrounded me.

The fruit of my tree of knowledge is plucked, and it is this: “Adventures are to the adventurous.”

Rock & roll is not about what you play, it's about how you play it.

Every problem has a creative solution.

I don't understand why Christians are taking such a bashing...and why do we glorify people that do destructive things?

I like how you don't hide your problems like everyone else, and I don't have to hide mine when I'm around you.

Things were about as normal as a Luddite working for Bill Gates.’ – Sundown