I have an idea of how the book will finish up, but it very rarely finishes up the way that I think it's going to.

Quiet people have the loudest minds.

Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.

The water was glassy and calm, still candy-colored in the afterglow of sunset.

A life without love is like a tree without fruit.

The trust of the innocent is the liar's most useful tool.

Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.

Outside, daylight was bleeding slowly toward dusk.

You can't deny laughter; when it comes, it plops down in your favorite chair and stays as long as it wants.

People who try hard to do the right thing always seem mad.

The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there... and still on your feet.

Sometimes happiness consists of finding the right balance of misery.

Religion is a set of rituals.

We humans are the only creatures on the planet capable of articulating worlds which are contrary, even in the most minor way, to reality. Every story, I think, begins there. With a dream. A fantasy.

I am catastrophically in love with you.

Endurance is patience concentrated.

If I had any dignity, that would have been humiliating.

It's pretty difficult to promote something the week after Christmas and the week before New Year's.

The written history of the world is largely a history of warfare, because the states within which we live came into existence largely through conquest, civil strife, or struggles for independence.

I've discovered writers by reading books left in airplane seats and weird hotels.