There were people everywhere on the city street, but the stranger could not have been more alone if it were empty.

A snowball in the face is surely the perfect beginning to a lasting friendship.

Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day.

If only she could be so oblivious again, to feel such love without knowing it, mistaking it for laughter.

Often I wish this would all be over, Liesel, but then somehow you do something like walk down the basement steps with a snowman in your hands.

I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.

I guess humans like to watch a little destruction. Sand castles, houses of cards, that's where they begin. Their great skills is their capacity to escalate.

No matter how many times she was told that she was loved, there was no recognition that the proof was in the abandonment.

It was the beginning of the greatest Christmas ever. Little food. No presents. But there was a snowman in their basement.

As always, one of her books was next to her.

If you can't imagine it, think clumsy silence. Think bits and pieces of floating despair. And drowning in a train.

Education costs an arm and a leg, but ignorance costs you your mind and your soul.

Chess holds its master in its own bonds, shackling the mind and brain so that the inner freedom of the very strongest must suffer.

A certain combination of incompetence and indifference can cause almost as much suffering as the most acute malevolence.

Erratum. In my article on the Price of Milk, 'Horses' should have read 'Cows' throughout.

Comedy and sausages are the two things that if you know how they're made they affect the appetite.

Science makes God unnecessary.

I don't see myself as weird, I just see myself as honest.

Mirror becomes a razor when it's broken. A stick becomes a flute when it's loved.