So much good, so much evil. Just add water.

A snowball in the face is surely the perfect beginning to a lasting friendship.

Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day.

If only she could be so oblivious again, to feel such love without knowing it, mistaking it for laughter.

Often I wish this would all be over, Liesel, but then somehow you do something like walk down the basement steps with a snowman in your hands.

I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.

I guess humans like to watch a little destruction. Sand castles, houses of cards, that's where they begin. Their great skills is their capacity to escalate.

No matter how many times she was told that she was loved, there was no recognition that the proof was in the abandonment.

It was the beginning of the greatest Christmas ever. Little food. No presents. But there was a snowman in their basement.

As always, one of her books was next to her.

If you can't imagine it, think clumsy silence. Think bits and pieces of floating despair. And drowning in a train.

We cross from memory into imagination with only a vague awareness of change.

The novelist is more like a pregnant woman who delivers her own child unaided. A messy procedure, with lots of groaning.

It's a tragic that we recognized our self worth from external validation.

Deep down, he knew. He knew the reason behind the chaos and, in the process of acknowledging it, he fell in love with the concept of chaos.

When you get to the top, raise the top and climb some more.

A neurotic can perfectly well be a literary genius, but his greatest danger is always that he will not recognize when he is dull.

I'm not the kind of guy who's taking advantage of my position.

The people you killed seem to be in excellent health.

The fish in the water is silent, the animals on the earth is noisy, the bird in the air is singing. But man has in him the silence of the sea, the noise of the earth and the music of the air.

Some of the exuberance of my essay-writing has gone because I'm worried about the uses they could serve.