The snow did not even whisper its way to earth, but seemed to salt the night with silence.

When it came to formal classes, I was a slacker. But I've always been a diligent autodidact and can teach myself virtually any subject if I have a serious interest in it.

I am twenty years old. To a world-wise adult, I am little more than a child. To any child, however, I am old enough to be distrusted, to be excluded forever from the magical community of the short and beardless.

One of the greatest sorrows of human existence is that some people aren't happy merely to be alive but find their happiness only in the misery of others.

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

To a predator, fear indicates weakness.

If she possessed any memory whatsoever of the days when she'd been whole, her shattered recollections were scattered across the darkscape of her mind in fragments so minuscule that she could no more easily piece them together than she could gather from the beach all the tiny chips of broken seashells, worn to polished flakes by ages of relentless tides, and reassemble them into their original architectures.