Write the kind of story you would like to read. People will give you all sorts of advice about writing, but if you are not writing something you like, no one else will like it either.

Yeah,” Nicole said, her straw noisily hitting the bottom of her Gut Buster. “Well, I would have appreciated it if you guys had wrecked a little less stuff. Because my house smelled like smoke for months. And construction on the Tarantinos’ new garage starts at eight on the dot every morning, and it’s still going on, and you know how I get if I don’t have my full ten hours of beauty sleep.” “So that’s what happened to your face,” Cody said. “I was wondering.

I mean it. Like, people always talk about how God doesn’t ever give you more than you can handle, but I’m telling you right now, I cannot handle this. This is just too much!

Didn't your mother ever tell you," Rob asked, "that you're supposed to play hard to get?" I looked at his lips. I probably don't need to tell you that they're really nice lips, kind of full and strong-looking. "What," I wanted to know, "is that going to get me?

I've only been gone a week," I reminded him. Well, a week's a long time. It's seven days. Which is one hundred and sixty-eight hours. Which is ten thousand, eighty minutes. Which is six hundred thousand, for hundred seconds.

My favorite book of all time is Cold Comfort Farm, by Stella Gibbons.

[...] even in the cruelest human being there can exist a flower of good. Maybe just the tiniest blossom, in need of water and sunlight, but a flower just the same.