and I wanted this girl who was like no girl I had ever known, wanted her not in spite of her moods and her secret bruises and her sad attempts at artifice but because of them, because of them all.

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.

Soap and water and common sense are the best disinfectants.

The most terrifying thing in the world was having to give a speech at my girlfriend's wedding. I was physically shaking and sweating the entire time.

Childhood, who like an April morn appears, Sunshine and rain, hopes clouded o'er with fears.

One should never pursue the hazards of fortune to their very ends andit behooves all adventurers to treat their good luck with reverence, neither bothering nor upsetting it.

You'll be scared! Sure you'll be scared. Who wouldn't fear having their head completely blown off.

There are all sorts of things embodied in the Lego brick - geometry and mathematics and truth and proportion and shape and colour... It is a faintly spiritual activity that everybody connects with.

Now that I'm coming out with my own record people can see I'm a solo artist.

I began to rationalize marrying Will [William Houston Price]. 'He comes from a good family. A girl could do worse.' (As it turned out, I couldn't, but I didn't know that yet.)

Love tends to end in a very painful goodbye.

Popularity? It's glory's small change.