Some people should never meet.

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.

Shut your eyes to the world of pain, and you also shut your eyes to the world of delight.

The sky's gone blue: azure, the ocean bluer: cerulean, the trees are swirls of every hella freaking green on earth and bright thick eggy yellow is spilling over everything.

Cast all the problems and troubles that people come to you with onto Him, and you can relax and stay healthy

For the sake of our security, our economy and our planet, we must have the courage and commitment to change.

For the moon though one, dispels the darkness, which the stars, though numerous, do not.

I think the main thing for kids is to have them believe in themselves.

When you start to die, don't.

I'd like to have a word for 'the sadness inspired by failing restaurants' as well as for 'the excitement of getting a room with a minibar.

No one gets out of the game of life alive. You either die in the bleachers, or on the field. So, you might as well play out on the field, and go for it.

In the 1920s, we thought the problems associated with alcohol could be solved by police and jails. Prohibition taught us we were wrong. The strategy of the present drug war is Prohibition redux.