... maybe that's all anyone who writes or paints or sculpts is doing anyway -- excusing themselves for refusing to live like other people or be like them.

If you had better sense you’d have learned by now that nothing thrives so well as wickedness

there are only two ways to make a lot [of money] while you're young: One is to entertain the public; and the other is to cheat it.

Marygreen did not change in sixteen years. It had changed little enough in the past two years.

Charm is the ability to make someone else think that both of you are pretty wonderful.

There's one thing I've always known: You can let people suspect anything else about you, but you must never let them suspect you of knowing what you're doing.

It seemed that up until this moment she had been only half alive.