If you rewrite a paragraph fifty times and forty-nine of them are terrible, that's fine; you only need to get it right once.

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.

Lighten up. Brighten up. Smile.

In no relationship at the top of any walk of life is it always easy, least of all in politics which matters so much and which is conducted in such a piercing spotlight.

Microsoft has long hired based on IQ and "intellectual bandwidth."

In AI, Spielberg is bleaching the dirt out of the human mind and leaving behind only the vacant gaze of machine 'love'. Coca Cola ads do much the same thing - and they don't take two hours.

That book taught me that by reading, I could live more intensely. It could give me back the sight I had lost. For that reason alone, a book that didn't matter to anyone changed my life.

Nobody should mistreat anybody. Homosexuals should not be mistreated. Heterosexuals should not be mistreated. Bisexuals should not be mistreated.

I get told I'm too good-looking for a lot of roles. They don't write roles people would think I'm supposed to play as often as they used to - the rom-com pretty-boy storylines.

My belief is that PowerPoint doesn't kill meetings. People kill meetings.

If there be light, then there is darkness; if cold, heat; if height, depth; if solid, fluid; if hard, soft; if rough, smooth; if calm, tempest; if prosperity, adversity; if life, death.

His neigh is like the bidding of a monarch, and his countenance enforces homage. He is indeed a horse.