In spite of her plainness that would have made wallflowers of other women, she radiated a great sense of self-importance.

How could the death of someone you had never met affect you so?

The dead could only speak through the mouths of those left behind, and through the signs they left scattered behind them.

Couples tended to be of roughly equivalent personal attractiveness, though of course factors such as money often seemed to secure a partner of significantly better looks than oneself.

She wuz depressed. Yeah, she wuz on stuff for it. Like me. Sometimes it jus' takes you over. It's an illness, " she said, although she made the words sound like "it's uh nill

Hers was the kind of family that commissioned painters to immortalize its young: a background utterly alien to Strike, and one he had come to know like a dangerous foreign country.

Who was more conscious than the soldier of capricious fortune, of the random roll of the dice?

You ought to give up detecting and try fantasy writing, Strike

Ridiculous, " he said breathlessly. "You ought to give up detecting and try fantasy writing.

In the inverted food chain of fame, it was the big beasts who were stalked and hunted

Not only are selves conditional but they die. Each day, we wake slightly altered, and the person we were yesterday is dead. So why, one could say, be afraid of death, when death comes all the time?

Lord, by the words of consecration the substance of the bread and wine is converted into the substance of your Body and Blood. All powerful Lord, say over me the word which will change me into You.

I make music cuz it's almost like I can escape everything I was involved in. All I gotta do is make music. I don't do nothin but make music.

If you get bored of doing it (Peacock Pose) with two hands, try it with one.

Stay back, human. You don't know what you're dealing with.

If God had meant us to go metric, why did he give Christ twelve apostles?

But perhaps this is what goes wrong with long marriages--you state your opinions, your likes and dislikes, at the beginning and then forget to mention when they change" (135).

I think music is what takes the experience off the screen into your soul, into your head.

If Instagram had been available when I was working in Nicaragua in 1978, I'm sure I would have wanted to use it as a way of reporting directly from the streets during the insurrection.

What we feel is not based on our experience, but on our INTERPRETATION of experiences.