You don't have to like your family, you don't even have to spend time with them, to know them right down to the bone.

Some people are little Chernobyls, shimmering with silent, spreading poison: get anywhere near them and every breath you take will wreck you from the inside out.

I wanted to tell her that being loved is a talent too, that it takes as much guts and as much work as loving; that some people, for whatever reason, never learn the knack

Her forehead was a maze of anxious little grooves, from a lifetime of wondering about whether everyone within range was OK.

A bore or an uggo might manage not to get up anyone's nose, but if a girl's got brains and looks and personality, she's going to piss someone off, somewhere along the way.

Don't you ever feel that - that you just need to get away? From everything? That it's all too much?

I hate nostalgia, it's laziness with prettier accessories.

We think about mortality so little, these days, except to flail hysterically at it with trendy forms of exercise and high-fiber cereals and nicotine patches.

The thing about being a mystery writer, what marks a mystery writer out from a chick lit author or historical fiction writer, is that you always find a mystery in every situation.

I don't do that kind of negativity. If you put your energy into thinking about how much the fall would hurt, you're already halfway down.

I had been right: freedom smelled like ozone and thunderstorms and gunpowder all at once, like snow and bonfires and cut grass, it tasted like seawater and oranges.

Being considerate of others will take your children further in life than any college degree.

Tragedy is a disaster

Time is an avid gambler who has no need to cheat to win every time.

There are still some natural forces that everybody understands. Technology and industry have distanced people from nature and magic and human values.

The roughest part for me when I'm writing a song is staring at a blank page. Where am I going from here? If you're a songwriter, you have to do that every time you start a song.

Character is the ability to follow through on a resolution long after the emotion with which it was made has passed.

Tolerance is forced on people in London.

There is no lie that a man will not believe; and there is no man who does not believe many lies; and there is no man who believes only lies.

My God, there are so many mediocre screenplays out there.

It seems like we're spending billions of dollars on whiz-bang technology and not enough money on human resources, which really is proven to be the most effective way of stopping terrorism.