There is nothing fiercer than a failed artist. The energy remains, but having no outlet, it implodes in a great fart of rage which smokes up all the inner windows of the soul.

I stand in the mist and cry, thinking of myself standing in the mist and crying, and wondering if I will ever be able to use this experience in a book.

Though my friends envied me because I always seemed so cheerful and confident, I was secretly terrified of practically everything.

Any system was a straightjacket if you insisted on adhering to it so totally and humorlessly.

It was easy enough to kill yourself in a fit of despair. It was easy enough to play the martyr. It was harder to do nothing. To endure your life. To wait.

You don't have to beat a woman if you can make her feel guilty.

Husband and wife have no time left to spend together. Marriage took away our one reason for getting married.

We came to realize how little married couples see of each other once they crawl in the bourgeois box.

Maybe marriages are best in middle age. When all the nonsense falls away and you realize you have to love one another because you're going to die anyway.

We're programmed for suffering, not joy. The masochism is built in at a very early age. You're supposed to work and suffer - and the trouble is: you believe it.

Tears are a form of communication - like speech - and require a listener.

The Clayr saw me, the Wallmaker made me, the King quenched me, the Abhorsen wields me so that no Dead shall walk in Life. For this is not their path.

we are too busy listening to our thoughts that we don't hear the wonderful sounds surrounding us...

My son if sinners entice thee consent thou not.

[T]he myth that there was somehow a magic wand in the early 1980s to cure AIDS - a wand that Reagan deliberately refused to wave - is now almost conventional wisdom.

A horn has that voice quality, and an electric guitar can emulate that. But playing an acoustic, the notes don't sustain like that.

Sometimes, when Bridget was in a particularly melodious mood, Sophie thought about stalking downstairs and pushing her into the oven like the with in 'Hansel and Gretel.

Self defense is a primary law of nature, which no subsequent law of society can abolish; the immediate gift of the Creator, obliges everyone to resist the first approaches of tyranny.

Everyone is psychic. Being psychic is not a particular talent. Everybody has a left foot. Some people may just walk with that foot, some people may drag it, and some may learn to dance with it.

I have learned God doesn't always change those people we want Him to change; instead, He often uses them to change us.