I'm still very much in the apprentice stage of writing. I read somewhere that you need to write a million words before you know what you're doing - so I'm headed that way, but I'm nowhere near there.

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.

Be an artist, in whatever little faculty possible.For the Earth, without ‘Art’ is just ‘Eh

We are all hypocrites. We cannot see ourselves or judge ourselves the way we see and judge others.

Believe it or not, Christianity is not about good people getting better. If anything, it is good news for bad people coping with their failure to be good.

My mother's a pretty warm, open person.

Killing with the point lacks artistry, but don't let that hold your hand when the opening presents itself.

Does choice exist when I see something very clearly?

Colin Singleton’s distance from his glasses made him realize the problem: myopia. He was nearsighted. The future lay before him, inevitable but invisible.

The bricks and mortar of the music business, they don't exist any longer.

When large numbers of people share their joy in common, the happiness of each is greater because each adds fuel to the other's flame.

What I am endeavoring to do is simply speak the truth, speak common-sense values, free market principles and the Constitution. For every question, the Constitution is my touchstone.