Things had a way of working out for the best when you let them run their course.

Suddenly, I don't want to be this person anymore. I don't want to pretend I'm fooling the world when I'm not. I want someone else to have a plan for me, because I'm not doing a very good job myself.

Violence up close has a smell. Like copper blood and charcoal burning.

Things break all the time. Glass and dishes and fingernails. Cars and contracts and potato chips. You can break a record, a horse, a dollar. You can break the ice. There are coffee breaks and lunch breaks and prison breaks. Day breaks, waves break, voices break. Chains can be broken. So can silence, and fever... promises break. Hearts break.

It seems to me that no matter what religion you subscribe to, acts of kindness are the stepping-stones to making the world a better place--because we become better people in it.

When I think about writers who use fiction as social commentary and to raise social awareness but who are also very popular, I think of Dickens.

And I think, not for the first time, that what is immoral is not always wrong.