People in small towns, much more than in cities, share a destiny.

At the risk of appearing disingenuous, I don't really think of myself as 'writing humor.' I'm simply reporting on the world I observe, which is frequently hilarious.

And there comes a time in your life when you realize that if you don't take the opportunity to be happy, you may never get another chance again.

People sometimes get in the habit of being loyal to a mistake.

You use simple brushstrokes in a screenplay for things over which you would take much greater pains in a novel.

Have you ever noticed that when people use the expression 'I have to say', what follows usually needn't be said?

What if all everybody needed in the world was to be sure of one friend? What if you were the one, and you refused to say those simple words?

My books are elegiac in the sense that they're odes to a nation that even I sometimes think may not exist anymore except in my memory and my imagination.

Worse, I have to admit to feeling the jealousy of one crab for another that has managed to climb out of the barrel.

Bookstores, like libraries, are the physical manifestation of the wide world's longest, most thrilling conversation.

I was the one who did come through that door. You were the one she was waiting for.

Your best teacher is your last mistake.

But if anyoneso much as threatened them because of what Kaiahad once done, she would turn the Slumber PartyMassacre into Blood, Bath and Beyond, adocumentary by Kaia Skyhawk.

If the pocket goes dry but the mind is fertile, awake and plant something noble in the mind and you shall surely reap something noble in the end, no matter what!

College mostly makes people like bladders—just good for nothing but t’ hold the stuff as is poured into ‘em.

To make the reader afraid, I had to be afraid.

I’m all mixed up inside. It’s like—I don’t know—like an ignition of some kind. one minute, I’m fine, and the next I’m losing it.

We all have that capacity, to be two things. And after all I was named for both the devil and the angel. Demonio y angel. Dem-y-an.

I love Australian people.

You know there's no crooked politicians. There's never a lie because there is never any truth.

I found the idea of being a librarian very appealing--working in a place where people had to whisper and only speak when necessary. If only the world were like that!