We yearn for tomorrow and the progress that it represents. But yesterday was once tomorrow, and where was progress in it? Or we yearn for yesterday, for what was or what might have been. But as we are yearning, the present is becoming the past, so the past is nothing but our yearning for second chances.

As an attorney, I assure you the law isn't a line engraved in marble, immovable and unchangeable through the centuries. Rather the law is like a string, fixed at both ends but with a great deal of play in it very loose, the line of the law so you can stretch it this way or that, rearrange the arc of it so you are nearly always short of blatant theft or cold-blooded murder safely on the right side. That's a daunting thing to realize but true.

Only the human spirit can act with volition and consciously change itself; it is the only thing in all creation that is not entirely at the mercy of forces outside itself.

I can remember the times when I started including humor in novels that were suspenseful. I was told you can't do that because you can't keep the audience in suspense if they're laughing. My attitude was, if the character has a sense of humor, then that makes the character more real because that's how we deal with the vicissitudes of life, we deal with it through humor.

In the wind, the trees, like agitated lions preparing to roar, shook their great green manes.

I realized you might make money at writing, and you might even make a living at it. So after that I didn't write stories just for the class but wrote them for the purpose of submitting them somewhere, and at some point in the process, I began writing them just to please myself and that's where you begin to see the real value of a life of writing.

Life, Stormy says, is not about how fast you run or even with what degree of grace. It's about perseverance, about staying on your feet and slogging forward no matter what.