With my eyes closed, I ask if she knows how this will all turn out. "Long-term or short-term?" she asks. Both. "Long-term," she says, "we're all going to die. Then our bodies will rot. No surprise there. Short-term, we're going to live happily ever after." Really? "Really," she says. "So don't sweat it.

If there’s any trick to doing a job you hate . . . Mrs. Clark says it’s to find a job you hate even more.

I haven't shoplifted since I was 13.

When we die, these are the stories still on our lips. The stories we’ll only tell strangers, someplace private in the padded cell of midnight. These important stories, we rehearse them for years in our head but never tell. These stories are ghosts, bringing people back from the dead. Just for a moment. For a visit. Every story is a ghost.

I don't care what they do with my book so long as the flippin check clears.

Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I've ever known.

And if you believe that we really have free will, then you know that God can't really control us. And since God can't control us, all God does is watch and change channels when He gets bored.