When you put four Alaskans into a room, you have five marriages, six divorces, and seven political parties.

To be a writer is to embrace rejection as a way of life.

Cops never took anything on faith, and disbelieved every story that was told them on principle until and unless they could confirm that the story was fact in all its essentials, and even then remained wary and unconvinced. Cop shops bred skeptics. Skeptics cherished few illusions about human nature, and therefore were seldom disappointed.

Over a third of the Newenhan population was under eighteen,which didn't make his job any easier, the hormonally challenged being terminally and all too often fatally prone to acts of stupidity.

The library is what keeps us a step ahead of the apes.

That's some f***ing doorman you've got there, Ms. Shugak.

When you put four Alaskans into a room, you have five marriages, six divorces, and seven political parties.