In a clutch or a corner, I tend to make a weapon out of what is near at hand. That can be anything from a crowbar to a cat, though if I had a choice, I would prefer an angry cat, which I have found to be more effective than a crowbar. Although weaponless, I left the house by the back door, with two chocolate-pumpkin cookies. It's a tough world out there, and a man has to armor himself against it however he can. ~Odd Thomas

Pain is a gift. Humanity, without pain, would know neither fear nor pity.

I am basically a pretty good autodidact. I can teach myself things.

Like all of us in this storm between birth and death, I can wreak no great changes on the world, only small changes for the better, I hope, in the lives of those I love.

He once told me that an August evening was "as hot as three toads in a Cuisinart," a comparison that left me blinking two days later.

The dead are merely the countrymen of my future.

Pain can be endured and defeated only if it is embraced. Denied or feared, it grows.