Everyone may be ordinary, but they're not normal.

Whether in music or in fiction, the most basic thing is rhythm. Your style needs to have good, natural, steady rhythm, or people won't keep reading your work.

My father always told me: 'Give somebody a hand and he'll take an arm.

Give yourself five minutes to consider how you can turn a miserable situation to your benefit and that light bulb is going to click on.

She gave me this look – she might have been watching from a lifeboat as the ship went down. Or maybe it was the other way around.

Beyond the window, some kind of small, black thing shot across the sky. A bird, possibly. Or it might have been someone's soul being blown to the far side of the world.

pulled into my convenient neighborhood fast food restaurant. I ordered shrimp salad, onion rings, and a beer. The shrimp were straight out of the freezer, the onion rings soggy. Looking around the place, though, I failed to spot a single customer banging on a tray or complaining to a waitress. So I shut up and finished my food. Expect nothing, get nothing.