"Hello, Max," he said quietly, searching my face. "How do you feel?" Which was a ten on the 'imbecilic question' scale of one to ten. "Why, I feel fine, Jeb," I said brightly. "How about you?" "Any nausea? Headache?" "Yep. And it's standing here talking to me."

How could you stop loving me?

I never read detective novels. I started out in graduate school writing a more serious book. Right around that time I read 'The Day of the Jackal' and 'The Exorcist'. I hadn't read a lot of commercial fiction, and I liked them.

We will destroy you,” the Flyboys droned. “You have no escape.” That was the most imaginative, threatening thing the whitecoats had programmed these ’droids to say? “Talk about lame,” Fang muttered.

Sometimes when you're at your most certain, that's when everything you know is wrong.

My life would never contain a convenient, pain-saving plan when it could stretch a problem out into an endless agony of uncertainty and torture.

Now, Max, I think we both know your parents aren't missionaries." I opened my eyes wide. "No? Well, for God's sake, don't tell them. They'd be crushed. Thinking they're doing the Lord's work and all.