Stories are like relics, part of an undiscovered preexisting world. The writer's job is to use the tools in his or her toolbox to get as much of each one out of the ground intact as possible.

Quiet people have the loudest minds.

Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.

The water was glassy and calm, still candy-colored in the afterglow of sunset.

A life without love is like a tree without fruit.

The trust of the innocent is the liar's most useful tool.

Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.

Outside, daylight was bleeding slowly toward dusk.

You can't deny laughter; when it comes, it plops down in your favorite chair and stays as long as it wants.

People who try hard to do the right thing always seem mad.

The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there... and still on your feet.

My mother? My own mother told my lady governess that if the baby and I were in danger then they should save the baby.

Death was easy. Life was complicated.

I always knew death of this relation would beat the death out of my life.

May you have the hindsight to know where you've been, The foresight to know where you are going, And the insight to knowwhen you have gone too far

The sage has one advantage: he is immortal. If this is not his century, many others will be.

I really believe that readers are smart and sophisticated enough to realize that the author is not the narrator of his novels.

I think if I was in over 250 films, the world would get pretty sick of me. I would probably never get put in anything ever again.

We're going to hear an earful, but it's going to be an earful of wonderment and happiness that people waited for for a long time.

Peace comes not by establishing a calm outward setting so much as by inwardly surrendering to whatever the setting.

Regret doesn't remind us that we did badly, it reminds us that we know that we could do better.