I was not going to use writing for advertising or journalism. I would tend bar, load trucks, chauffeur - do whatever it took. But from the moment I took my first writing workshop, I was a writer.

Happiness comes in moments, & then it's gone until the next time. Could be years. But sadness settles it.

Charm was the luxury of those who still believed in the essential rightness of things. In purity and picket fences.

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

The best thing that can happen to people entering creative professions is the dwindling of all other possibilities.

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?

Believe it or not, Marshal, I believe in talk therapy, basic interpersonal skills. I have this radical idea that if you treat a patient with respect and listen to what he's trying to tell you, you just might reach him. (87)