You can choose your friends, but you sho' can't choose your family.

I didn't expect the book to sell in the first place. I was hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of reviewers but at the same time I sort of hoped that maybe someone would like it enough to give me encouragement. Public encouragement. I hoped for a little, as I said, but I got rather a whole lot, and in some ways this was just about as frightening as the quick, merciful death I'd expected.

She knew full well the enormity of her offense, but because her desires were stronger than the code she was breaking, she persisted in breaking it.

Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win.

I'm Charles Baker Harris...I can read

Weeping for Anna Karenina and being terrified by Hannibal Lecter, entering the heart of darkness with Mistah Kurtz, having Holden Caulfield ring you up - some things should happen on soft pages, not cold metal.

There's a lot of ugly things in this world, son. I wish I could keep 'em all away from you. That's never possible.