By the hairy balls of Jesus

It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.

Some of these things are true and some of them lies. But they are all good stories.

Florence and Milan had given him ideas more flexible than those of people who'd stayed at home.

When you are writing laws you are testing words to find their utmost power. Like spells, they have to make things happen in the real world, and like spells, they only work if people believe in them.

You learn nothing about men by snubbing them and crushing their pride. You must ask them what it is they can do in this world, that they alone can do.

Fantasy is unconstrained by truth.

His suppressed grief becomes anger. But what can he do with anger? It must also be suppressed.

For I chase but one hind, he says, one strange deer timid and wild, and she leads me off the paths that other men have trod, and by myself into the depths of the wood.

He has never told anyone this story. He doesn't mind talking to Richard, to Rafe about his past--within reason--but he doesn't mean to give away pieces of himself.

When I was small I dreamed of demons. I thought they were under my bed, but you said, it can't be so, you don't get demons our side of the river, the guards won't let them over London Bridge.

The best thing a girl can be is a good wife and mother. It is a girl's highest calling. I hope I am ready.

There is an earthly reality and a heavenly reality, prayer connects both.

Once you embrace unpleasant news, not as a negative but as evidence of a need for change, you aren't defeated by it. You're learning from it.

[On political correctness:] Any intended message mattered less than the received message, and every received message could be interpreted in whatever way the receiver wanted.

We don't become heroes overnight." - One step at a time, eventually discovering we have the strength to stare it down.

For without belittling the courage with which men have died, we should not forget those acts of courage with which men have lived.

War is just what we do. Yet, of course, the effects of it are repeatedly deeper, then deeper, then deeper.

When I finish a first draft, it's always just as much of a mess as it's always been. I still make the same mistakes every time.

One compensation of old age is that it excuses you from picnics.

The sound of the bat is the music of spring training.