When the reader hears strong echoes of his or her own life and beliefs, he or she is apt to become more invested in the story.

Quiet people have the loudest minds.

Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.

The water was glassy and calm, still candy-colored in the afterglow of sunset.

A life without love is like a tree without fruit.

The trust of the innocent is the liar's most useful tool.

Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.

Outside, daylight was bleeding slowly toward dusk.

You can't deny laughter; when it comes, it plops down in your favorite chair and stays as long as it wants.

People who try hard to do the right thing always seem mad.

The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there... and still on your feet.

If you become a singing bird, I will be the listening sky so that I will never miss your song.

No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from.

You can never be happy until you understand why you're doing what you're doing.

I'm really into extreme sports and just having fun.

We are never trapped unless we choose to be.

I go back to South Africa at least once a year, sometimes twice, and usually for a month. And probably, I'm guessing, I'll spend more time back there as I get older.

Although tyranny...may successfully rule over foreign peoples, it can stay in power only if it destroys first of all the national institutions of its own people.

The glass ceiling will go away when women help other women break through that ceiling.

The only time we can talk about death is while we're alive, not afterwards.

I took action as governor to preserve the sanctity of life.