Stories you read when you're the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them or what the story was called. Sometimes you'll forget precisely what happened, but if a story touches you it will stay with you, haunting the places in your mind that you rarely ever visit.

I know that this is the internet, and we're all anonymous and all that, but really. It doesn't hurt to try to be nice.

There's this thing, they have in french: L'espirit d'escalier. The spirit of the stairway. I don't think we have a word for it in English. It means, well, the clever things to say that you only think to yourself when you're on the way out.

Mr. Vandemar showed them his teeth, demonstrating his sunny and delightful disposition. It was unquestionably the most horrible thing Richard had ever seen.

I wish I could Buy Time - just write a cheque, and a few days later a brown cardboard box would arrive at the door containing three months (along with an extra bonus sunny weekend for being a good customer).

I learned to write by writing. I tended to do anything as long as it felt like an adventure, and to stop when it felt like work, which meant that life did not feel like work.

You shine like a beacon in a dark world.