But sometimes shame is a more powerful engine than rage. Like rage, it burns hot; and like rage it tends to consume its own furnace.

Closure isn't closure until someone's ready to close the door.

This one looks good,” said Chong over breakfast the next morning. Benny read out loud from the paper. “‘Pit Thrower.’ What’s that?” “I don’t know,” Chong said with a mouth full of toast. “I think it has something to do with barbecuing.” It didn’t.

Things said and done innocently should never be used as weapons.

I’m not sure I could trust a man who would bypass an Oreo in favor of vanilla wafers. It’s a fundamental character flaw, possibly a sign of true evil.

How do you know that?" "Because,"Chong said with raised eyebrows,"when you open those things called 'books',there are words as well as pictures.Sometimes the words tell you stuff.

Courage is tricky, oily. Easy to drop, easy to misplace." "I thought that if you had courage you always had it.". . . "Lilah, nothing is always there. Not courage, not joy, not hate or hope or anything else. We find courage, lose it, sometimes misplace it for years, and sometimes live in its grace for a while.