Human beings can always be relied upon to exert, with vigor, their God-given right to be stupid.

Because people see violence on the movie screen, they're not going to go out and hold up a liquor store and kill somebody. It really doesn't correlate.

I do give books as gifts sometimes, when people would rather have one than a new Ferrari.

When I'm working on a novel, I work 70-hour weeks.

The sane understand that human beings are incapable of sustaining conspiracies on a grand scale, because some of our most defining qualities as a species are inattention to detail, a tendency to panic, and an inability to keep our mouths shut.

These days, people spent too much time striving to understand their feelings - and then ended up with none that were genuine.

In this uncertain space between birth and death, especially here at the end of the world in Moonlight Bay, we need hope as surely as we need food and water, love and friendship. The trick, however, is to remember that hope is a perilous thing, that it's not a steel and concrete bridge across the void between this moment and a brighter future. Hope is no stronger than tremulous beads of dew strung on a filament of spider web, and it alone can't long support the terrible weight of an anguished mind and a tortured heart.