Most people tend to think the best of those who are blessed with beauty; we have difficulty imagining that physical perfection can conceal twisted emotions or a damaged mind.

Loyal companions are an unequaled grace, stanching fear before it bleeds you numb, a reliable antidote for creeping despair.

Each reader needs to bring his or her own mind and heart to the text.

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.

I receive about 10,000 letters a year from readers, and in the first year after a book is published, perhaps 5,000 letters will deal specifically with that piece of work.

If someone wrote it and it had a peculiar twist, I've read it.

One of the underlying things I like to do in books, is just say, stop and look at this for a moment. Not that you've got to believe that Jesus was real, or not to believe in God, but the belief that it isn't just happenstance.