A bolt of warmth, fierce with joy and pride and gratitude, flashed through me like sudden lightning. I don't care about whose DNA has recombined with whose. When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without flinching-they are your family. And they were my heroes.

You're in America now," I said. "Our idea of diplomacy is showing up with a gun in one hand and a sandwich in the other and asking which you'd prefer.

You don't take your cat with you to go bird shopping. Not because the cat isn't polite, but because he's a cat.

Molly was committing dinner. . .

There's power in the night. There's terror in the darkness. Despite all our accumulated history, learning, and experience, we remember. We remember times when we were too small to reach the light switch on the wall, and when darkness itself was enough to make us cry out in fear.

Your face looks like a sack of purple potatoes

I've always felt that the best whips and chains are in the mind. With a little creativity, the physical ones are hardly necessary.