It had never occurred to her that God would cry, but of course that was wrong. God would be crying all the time. He would cry and cry and never stop.

If you are writing any book about the end of the world, what you are really writing about is what's worth saving about it.

Behind every writer stands a very large bookshelf.

My inventing time is all done under the influence of aerobic exercise. Basically, I do all my thinking while I run.

I grew up during the Cold War, when everything seemed very tenuous. For many years, right up until the fall of the Berlin Wall, I had vivid nightmares of nuclear apocalypse.

We live, we die. Somewhere along the way, if we're lucky, we may find someone to help lighten the load.

This ravishing world. This achingly bittersweet, ravishing world.

I have any number of completely dark obsessions and fascinations, and none of this was present in my profile or my growing profile as a writer.

What strange places our lives can carry us to, what dark passages.

My theory of characterization is basically this: Put some dirt on a hero, and put some sunshine on the villain, one brush stroke of beauty on the villain.

My rule has always been, write the next part of the book that you seem to know well. So I won't necessarily write chapter two after chapter one.

If you can't trust, you can't be trustworthy.

He knelt among the shadows and felt his isolation bitterly. They were savages it was true

October is a fine and dangerous season in America. a wonderful time to begin anything at all. You go to college, and every course in the catalogue looks wonderful.

The world is starving for original and decisive leadership.

The vice lies not in entering the bordello but in not coming out.

My dream is to save them from nature.

I perpetuate rumors that I've dated people that I've never actually dated.

Only with our government are you given a certificate at birth, a license at marriage, and a bill at death.

Billy here has been talkin' about slicin' his wrists again, so is there seven of you guys who'd like to join him and make it therapeutic?

[T]he period between four and six in the morning is called the Brahmamuhurta, the Brahmic time, or divine period, and is a very sacred time to meditate. (140)