I have no personal stake in these people, Jean-Claude, but they are people. Good, bad, or indifferent, they are alive, and no one has the right to just arbitrarily snuff them out.” "So it is the sanctity of life you cling to?" I nodded. “That and the fact that every human being is special. Every death is a loss of something precious and irreplaceable.

I cannot do it. I cannot bear it. I cannot go back to what I was here. I cannot stand at her side and watch another take her. I am not that strong or that good.

Seventy percent of a first draft is garbage and 30 percent is gold, but you have to write 100 percent to get that 30.

If your life works, and you work in it, then it’s okay, whatever is happening is okay.

You either mellow at 30, or your head explodes - take your choice.

I smiled at him, as Doyle squeezed my hand and I squeezed back. "Some people are addicted to falling in love, Doctor. Some people love that rush of new emotions, and when that first rush of new love is spent, they move on to the next, thinking the love wasn't real. What I felt in her, and potentially in you, is the love of years. Love that knows that that first rush of freshness isn't the real thing. It's the tip of the iceberg.

But if anything will turn me off, it's a very practiced approach, as if the man has done it a thousand times before, to a lot of different women. Which always seems to imply that I am no different from all the rest. Not flattering.