Kids, fiction is the truth inside the lie, and the truth of this fiction is simple enough: the magic exists.

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.

It just feels like meeting him again was like seeing a blank paper ready to be sketched, a different idea to be drawn.

My parents told me to marry for money, ' said her husband. 'But I chose the love of a strong woman.''And look what trouble I turned out to be, ' she said.

...Night has chosen thee

Being the Novelist-in-Residence at a riad hotel in the kasbah of an Arabic North African city is a lot like trying to write one’s memoirs on shreds of napkins in a nuthouse.

No one told me holy water had chlorine in it.

In any case, though, I believe that I have not been fair to you and that, as a result, I must have led you around in circles and hurt you deeply.

A summons home to the nature that nourishes the best human qualities of creativity, intelligence, connection, and compassion.

Open your mind before you open your mouth

It was a miserable machine, an inefficient machine, she thought, the human apparatus for painting or for feeling; it always broke down at the critical moment; heroically, one must force it on.

Most important thought, if you love someone, tell him or her, for you never know what tomorrow may have in store.