Whenever I finish a book, I start with a blank slate and never have ideas lined up.

His weakness was his belief that evil had boundaries.

I was born with the devil in me,' [Holmes] wrote. 'I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing.

Time lost can never be recovered...and this should be written in flaming letters everywhere.

I thought I'd go to a bookstore and see what moved me.

It was so easy to disappear, so easy to deny knowledge, so very easy in the smoke and din to mask that something dark had taken root. This was Chicago, on the eve of the greatest fair in history.

Beneath the stars the lake lay dark and sombre," Stead wrote, "but on its shores gleamed and glowed in golden radiance the ivory city, beautiful as a poet's dream, silent as a city of the dead.

I must confess a shameful secret: I love Chicago best in the cold.

Chicago has disappointed her enemies and astonished the world

Leaves hung in the stillness like hands of the newly dead.

. . . why some men choose to fill their brief allotment of time engaging the impossible, others in the manufacture of sorrow.

Polarization breeds respect

If you live your life with passion, every second will become an adventure.

If we cannot live so as to be happy let us at least live so as to deserve it.

We cannot move forward or will not move forward if we are divided.

This is the end of the day, but soon there will be a new day.

Meaning drives us from despair to wonder, from confusion to clarity, from hesitance to confidence. And the only place to find meaning is in the importance of small things.

Why something in the public interest such as television news can be fought over, like a chain of hamburger stands, eludes me.

The tender pressure of his lips soothed her, like a warm drink in the dead of the winter, when every part of her felt so cold.

A few years ago I was at a party and this guy threw me over his shoulder, ran across the street, put me in his car, and stuck his tongue in my mouth.

I succeeded in using my charms like a weapon; I learned to play with other's hearts and to master my own desires.