So much for being a good friend was knowing when to keep your mouth shut.

Maybe that was the answer to good parenting—pretending the first child was the second.

Some people smoked crack in alleyways. Franny ate chocolate. On the scale of things, it seemed entirely reasonable.

She had the wild look of someone who hadn’t slept in twenty-four hours, with purplish semicircles underneath both her eyes. Being eighteen was like being made out of rubber and cocaine.

There was nothing in life harder or more important than agreeing every morning to stay the course, to go back to your forgotten self of so many years ago, and to make the same decision.

Advice for the wise: You"d better bite your tongueRather than cast a spell wrong.

To worship God in truth is to recognize Him for being who He is, and to recognize ourselves for what we are.

All victims have experienced a loss-a thwarted desire or aspiration-even if they're not aware of it.

What, then, is this new man, the American? They are a mixture of English, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans, and Swedes. From this promiscuous breed, that race, now called Americans, have arisen.

A cow peacefully grazing fifty yards away received one of the bullets in her back. She had nothing to do with the quarrel all the same.

I can understand German as well as the maniac that invented it, but I talk it best through an interpreter.

There is no real force without justice.

Which is worse, Risa often wondered, to have tens of thousands of babies that no one wanted or to silently make then go away before they were even born

To be honest, it is boring to talk about winning.

I definitely have been known to be grossly insensitive in many different ways, you can ask the wife. To speak without a filter sometimes and not being able to edit myself with much sensitivity.