We never know which lives we influence, or when, or why. Not until the future eats the present, anyway. We know when it's too late.

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.

I think most artists create out of despair. The very nature of creation is not a performing glory on the outside, it's a painful, difficult search within.

Brubaker and Phillipss books have always been about eight years ahead of their time.

There are some women out there who are just going to look better with a mustache: that's statistics.

When you're young, you don't feel iconoclastic - you're just kind of doing what seems natural, what moves you.

His grief he will not forget; but it will not darken his heart, it will teach him wisdom.

Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope.

I was really young, but I can't say that I wrote much of anything. I liked to scribble; I thought of it as that. But I was playing guitar and ukulele when I was in second grade.

You want to suggest something new, but at the same time, resolve the drama of the action in the novel.

True success is not a project but a journey.

To me, nothing is more vibrant than having the power to do something but not having the experience of knowing what's right and what's wrong.