I believe so deeply in the primacy of language, in lifting your prose to the highest level you're capable of and making your words symphonic.

This world can only give me reminders of what I don't have, can never have, didn't have for long enough.

Which would be worse - to live as a monster, or to die as a good man?

I can't remember coming across a more precise evocation of innocence lost since Golding's The Lord of the Flies. With The Death of Sweet Mister, Daniel Woodrell has written his masterpiece-spare, dark, and incandescently beautiful. It broke my heart.

Life isn't happily ever after... It's work. The person you love is rarely worthy of how big your love is. Because no one is worthy of that and maybe no one deserves that burden of it, either. You'll be let down. You'll be disappointed and have your trust broken and have a lot of real sucky days. You lose more than you win. You hate the person you love as much as you love him. But you roll up your sleeves and work - at everything - because that's what growing older is.

The brain controls pain. It controls fear. Sleep. Empathy. Hunger. Everything we associate with the heart or the soul or the nervous system is actually controlled by the brain. Everything. What if you could control it?

What's your name?" "Emma Gould," she said. "What's yours?" "Wanted." "By all the girls or just the law?