Nearly everyone underestimates how powerful the touch of another person's hand can be. The need to be touched is something so primal, so fundamentally a part of our existence as human beings that its true impact upon us can be difficult to put into words. That power doesn't necessarily have anything to do with sex, either. From the time we are infants, we learn to associate the touch of a human hand with safety, with comfort, with love.

I ask people impertinent questions. Hopefully turning up pertinent answers.

Harry," she said quietly, "I know you must be angry." I burn things to ash and smash holes in buildings when I'm angry," I said. "I'm a couple of steps past that point right now.

I've never lost a duel to the death. Not one.

You’re playing the creepy vibe a little hard,” I said. “Might as well go for broke, put on a black top hat and pipe in some organ music.

Pain does two things: It teaches you, tells you that you're alive. Then it passes away and leaves you changed. It leaves you wiser, sometimes. Sometimes it leaves you stronger. Either way, pain leaves its mark, and everything important that will ever happen to you in life is going to involve it in one degree or another.

There's a fine line between audacity and idiocy.