Was life like that? You could look ahead to the future or back to the past, but the present moved too quickly to absorb.

Don't let the brownies bite.

False humility is more insulting than open pride!

In short, heroism means doing the right thing regardless of the consequences.

An unread book does nobody any good. Stories happen in the mind of a reader, not among symbols printed on a page.

Smart people learn from their mistakes. But the real sharp ones learn from the mistakes of others.

Want a reliable road to emotional and spiritual suicide? Spend your life trying to fit in.

Hello, cell. How are you? Still dank and dirty? Me? I've taken up a new habit: talking to my cell. It's like talking to myself but slightly more pathetic.

Running toward danger is foolhardy. ... But so is closing your eyes to it. Many perils become less dangerous once you understand their potential hazards.

FABLEHAVEN: None who enter will leave unchanged. Trespassers will be turned to stone.

Hard to call it a party without sardines.

Opposites attract in physics. In life, like attracts like. Kindness attracts kindness. Greed attracts greed. Love attracts love. If you don't like what you're attracting, change who you are.

Bland as a Jesuit sober as a hymn.

We cannot teach a flower how to grow, we can only learn from it.

When you live in a small house with five younger siblings, it's actually far more sensible- and much quicker- to cry alone.

It's always nice to anticipate working in something that you know people will have an appetite for.

I'm just looking for an angel with a broken wing.

Obstinacy is the strength of the weak. Firmness founded upon principle, upon the truth and right, order and law, duty and generosity, is the obstinacy of sages.

One should judge a man mainly from his depravities. Virtues can be faked. Depravities are real.

But it had no doubt sprung from true emotion, for all that parents ever wanted, really, was for you to love their child the way they did.

I have written too much about lives - I feel I have lived for too long.