The ceilings had set off a ghostly echo, giving all that desperate hilarity the quality of a memory even as I sat listening to it, memories of things I'd never known.

...with a grief no less sharp for not being intimate with its object.

I suppose the shock of recognition is one of the nastiest shocks of all.

That surge of power and delight, of confidence, of control. That sudden sense of the richness of the world. Its infinite possibility.

It was like waking from a nightmare to a worse nightmare.

their reality was far more interesting than any idealized version could possibly be

But, if I dare say it, it wasn't until I had helped kill a man that I realized how elusive and complex an act a murder can actually be, and not necessarily attributable to one dramatic motive.

Does such a thing as "the fatal flaw, " that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature?

I have only to glance over my shoulder for all those years to drop away and I see it behind me again, the ravine, rising all green and black through the saplings, a picture that will never leave me.

I sometimes get the feeling that he was less pleased by kindness itself than by the elegance of the gesture.

Though Julian could be marvelously kind in difficult circumstances of all sorts, I sometimes got the feeling that he was less pleased by kindness itself than by the elegance of the gesture.

Life is a divine adventure.

Do you still insist on telling the truth even though you know that it could destroy this world?

The bottom line is, if you're pregnant, don't travel to an area where Zika is spreading.

I don't look at myself as a hero or smart person. I have a seventh-grade education, but I've had a lot of fun.

If you ever need a helping hand, you'll find one at the end of your arm. Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants to see us happy.

I have to be perfectly honest: You should have an anniversary to acknowledge the way I work the ebonics.

Quite suddenly Meggie felt fear rise in her like black brackish water, she felt lost, terribly lost, she felt it in every part of her. She didn't belong here! What had she done?

The belief that we are what the media says we are, what people perceive we are, is soon to be what we think we are. We are treated based on this warped perception. It is hard to get away from it.

Prayer may be elevating if combined with work, and they who labor with head, hands or feet have faith and are generally quite sure of an immediate and favorable reply.

Wherever there is power, there is very great responsibility to utilize it properly.