Sometimes, when you're close to someone, you miss things. Other people can see them, but you can't.

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.

Leadership is influence. An influencer is not automatically a leader.

Oh, Major, you do so love to annoy, don't you?""It is the stuff of living, my lady.

Hope:Belief in a bright future.

I have never been a violent man. Just a little creepy, it seems.

Blood is thicker than water, but they still use corn starch as a thickener on cooking shows

The taste of defeat has a richness of experience all its own.

A book is completed only when it is finished by a reader.

If I had a reality show, it would probably be called “Keeping Fit With Jesse Tyler Ferguson” because then I’d be forced to hit the gym every day.

If feathers don't ruffle, nothing flies.

Misfortune comes to people who live only on the memory of their past grandeur.