One of my da's tragedies was always the fact that he was bright enough to understand just how comprehensively he had shat all over his life.

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.

To answer your question, you want me because I'm made of awesome.

Magic's just science that we don't understand yet.

It's a breath you took too late.It's a death that's worse than fate.

We don't have to accept the things we might change.

Darkness is the fit hour for beasts of prey, and ignorance the natural dwelling place of cruelty.

The first condition of nonviolence is justice all round, in every department of life.

When we have an inner initiation into pure love, we are in contact with our true nature.

Each cartoon needs the right amount of wrong.

You don’t choose a story, it chooses you.

Every man is my superior in that I may learn from him.