"What we control," Juliette said, "is our actions once fate puts us there."

Killing a man should be harder than waving a length of pipe in their direction. It should take long enough for one's conscience to get in the way.

Even in the darkness, his smile threw shadows.

It was the hubris of each generation to think this anew, to think that their time was special, that all things would come to an end with them.

Fiction challenges us and works its miracles by placing us in the skin of another human being and teaching us empathy.

Sometimes a thing needed opening before closure was found.

It’s easy to forgo distractions and to not accumulate things when you have a larger goal on the horizon.

I'd rather excite the imagination of a legion of readers and make pennies from each of them than hold off for a larger chunk of change from only a handful of fans.

Heroes didn't win. The heroes were whoever happened to win. History told their story -- the dead didn't say a word. All of it was bullshit.

My life is too tight, he wanted to say. My skin is too tight. The walls are too tight.

There were certain things, learned so young and remembered so deep that they felt like little stones in the center of her mind.

We are only an instant, that's true. But we are eternal.

What is thine is mine and all mine is thine.

Years ago I wanted to buy an apartment in New York City. I was a single female - I had gone through my divorce - I had three children, I was in show business and black. It was, like, impossible.

The four building blocks of the universe are fire, water, gravel and vinyl.

The writer who can't do his job looks to his editor to do it for him, though he won't dream of sharing his royalties with that editor.

Had we but world enough, and time, this coyness, lady, were no crime.

nothing she did or said was quite what she meant but still her life could be called a monument shaped in a slant of available light and set to the movement of possible music

He can't possibly live up to the person you've built him to be

Even in our darkest hour we must remember; never dispair.

There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice.