Molly, you are a good person. Don't let anyone take that away from you. Not even yourself.

But I don't understand God. I don't understand how he could see the way people treat one another, and not chalk up the whole human race as a bad idea.

Ease off the martyr throttle.

He's Gandalf on crack and an IV of Red Bull, with a big leather coat and a .44 revolver in his pocket.

Life is precious, fragile, fleeting - and Murphy's life was one of my favorites.

I grunted. It's something I picked up over a fifteen-year career in law enforcement. Men have managed to create a complex and utterly impenetrable secret language consisting of monosyllabic sounds and partial words—and they are apparently too thick to realize it exists. Maybe they really are from Mars. I'd been able to learn a few Martian phrases over time, and one of the useful ones was the grunt that meant "I acknowledge that I've heard what you said; please continue.

When I started, I was pretty sure I was going to be writing some goofy little wizard novels that might make me some part-time money and would hopefully lead to something I could do better.