The grief in her green eyes slips then hardens and, for an instant, Pendleton sees the woman she has become and has no right being, not at sixteen.

My English teacher said that a writer is the worst judge of his own work.

She's got the kind of ethereal, unselfconscious beauty some young girls possess that breaks your heart. Or theirs.

I am a ghost in a land of phantoms and forgotten nightmares.

Follow your heart. Just don't get lost.

They call it the drowning instinct. It's when drowning doesn't look like drowning. (pg. 241)

The things you think about when you're a hair's breath away from getting yourself killed.

We all have our fictions, little lies we tell ourselves to keep going from one day to the next.

The familiar was usually invisible; how many people really noticed everything they saw?

As the dog sprinted back, Jack said to the girl, "Sweetheart,honey, why do you have to be so hateful?" "Why not?" Ellie said. "It's not like being good ever got me anywhere.

What's the point of not taking chances? I don't know if I could stand living my whole life afraid.

Nature never taught me that there exists a God of glory and of infinite majesty. I had to learn that in other ways. But nature gave the word "glory" a meaning for me.

God must have a weird sense of values, and if there’s a Judgment Day, as some folks think, He’s going to have a lot to answer for.

Every man should have a fair-sized cemetery in which to bury the faults of his friends.

She can play my guitar note for note, she likes to stick her tongue down my throat.

The threats against democracy today are in general completely normal. They walk around in costume and tie.

I earn and pay my own way as a great many women do today.

Personal columnists are jackals and no jackal has been known to live on grass once he had learned about meat - no matter who killed the meat for him.

Scientists are scientists. They're not really in a position to speak clearly on the moral dimensions, and they're not really comfortable doing that.

Nothing else even comes close.

I don't compete with other people in the industry, I compete with myself.