He felt ... a suspicion-no, a conviction-than he had been abandoned, forgotten, and that no one in the whole world cared or would ever care enough about him to really find out what he was like and what his dreams were. He was an outcast, a creature somehow vastly different from all other people, an object of scorn and derision, an outsider, secretly loathed and ridiculed by everyone who met him, even by those few who professed to love him.

The wives of Spartans are the secret pillars of the world."--Odd Thomas

If you have to pay the bills, and you write something you're not proud of, use a pen-name for that.

Not all or even most suffering is at the hands of fate; it befalls us at our invitation.

Nothing gives us courage more readily than the desire to avoid looking like a damn fool.

We need to laugh at the irrationality of evil, for in doing so we deny evil's power over us, diminish its influence in the world, and tarnish the allure it has for some people.

less real than such threats as a man with a gun, a woman with a knife, or a U.S. Senator with an idea.