Harsh, bitter laughs exploded from her like shrapnel, and she didn’t care who was cut in the process.

Shards flew everywhere, slicing her hands, her forearm, and cascading to the floor like snow glistening on a winter morning.

As the sky faded to night, her anger dissipated—but not in a healing way, just dulled, like forged iron sizzling in a cold pail of water.

Aggression like this demanded slinging the first punch in a bar brawl, firing rounds at a range, or setting a car on fire.

She glanced outside at the sky, filled with clouds and smog. All the pollution, all that hell—even the stars didn’t stand a chance.

As she’d walked along this street, a million stars stretched across an indigo canvas, holding all the freedom she’d yearned for every night.

The Cottage Diner’s homey lights glowed onto black asphalt which just sucked up the beams to spit out more shadows.

Time to make herself scarce because, hell, she didn’t want to pass that thunderhead on her way out.

Blonde hair drawn into a no-nonsense bun, her new manicure the deep red of fresh blood, she’d even donned a blouse and slacks for the occasion, something Neve had forgotten Veronica owned.

There is do much sttuborn hope in a human heart.

Life is a circle. It spins you around.

Begin to pursue your dream.

Young women with ambitions should be very crafty and cautious, lest mayhap they be caught in the soft, silken mesh of a happy marriage, and go down to oblivion, dead to the world.

All this was new to me. Life takes us by surprise and orders us to move towards the unknown - even when we don't want to and we think we don't need to.

You love who you love and that’s who you love.

Thus people--so it seems to me-- Become good friends from sheer ennui.

I hate to be fatalistic about it, but alcoholism, it's just in your genes. We had some of it in my family, and it just got me.

My first character was Mr. Toad.

The royal road to a man's heart is to talk to him about the things he treasures most.