This unlikely story begins on a sea that was a blue dream, as colorful as blue-silk stockings, and beneath a sky as blue as the irises of children's eyes.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

I hope you live a life you're proud of...

I have never wished there was a God to call on- I have often wished there was a God to thank.

I guess I'm the Black Death,' he said slowly. 'I don't seem to bring people happiness any more.

She was beautiful - but especially she was without mercy.

A sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth.