Nicotine and alcohol embraced in my system like long-parted siblings, grateful to me for reuniting them.

Literature is humanity's broad-minded alter-ego, with room in its heart for monsters, even for you. It's humanity without the judgement.

Life's generally artless ... but it does get these occasional hard-ons for plot. It connects things, nefariously, behind your back, and before you know it you're in the final act of a lousy movie.

Snow makes cities innocent again, reveals the frailty of the human gesture against the void.

That's what happens when you keep a secret from someone you love: you start to hate them for allowing you to prove your own willingness to deceive them.

Words betrayed her: beautiful butterflies in her mind; dead moths when she opened her mouth for their release into the world.

When you're a kid it's people's cruelty that makes you cry, then when you're an adult it's their kindness.

Coffee justifies the existence of the word 'aroma'.

There is no God and that's His only commandment.

With adolescent egotism and a lot of money one can pretty much rule the world.

You think God will never forgive you, but the only God is beauty and beauty always forgives. It forgives with its infinite indifference.

Women, churchgoers, and conservative were more likely than men, nonchurch goers, and liberals to disagree with the reductionist (neural) account of human life.

It's good that it hurts. Pain is the signal that you're confused, that you're in a lie.

There is no promise in the world that is okay to break.

Running into a pole is a drag, but never being allowed to run into a pole is a disaster.

Human beings are sloshing sacks of chemicals on the move.

I'm not really book-smart.

Problems, obstacles, and challenges can either become the markers of our limits and limitations, or they can become the springboard into a whole new world.

Lockheed! You found me! You are the best X-Dragon ever.

I have friends who are so sarcastic, but I never view it as mean.

The real thing that we renounce is the tenacious hope that we could be saved from being who we are.