Never, under any circumstances, let the Virginian wolfsnake near a typewriter.

Every new promise was like something heavy I had to carry, with no place to put anything down.

How do you forget something? You just walk away from it, those who are still alive. There are so few clearings in our hearts and minds, so few places where something can't grow on top of whatever happened to us before, and this is love too.

Arguing with somebody is never pleasant, but sometimes it is useful and necessary to do so.

The trouble with talking about irony is, it's such a slippery thing that the second you start talking about it, you're a better example of it than you are an analyst.

The quoting of an aphorism, like the angry barking of a dog or the smell of overcooked broccoli, rarely indicates that something helpful is about to happen.

There are many reasons, of course, why someone might snap their fingers and grin. If you heard some pleasing music, for instance, you might snap your fingers and grin to demonstrate that the music had charms that could soothe your savage breast. If you were employed as a spy, you might snap your fingers and grin in order to deliver a message in secret snapping-and-grinning code.