In the case of 'Ocean at the End of the Lane,' it's a book about helplessness. It's a book about family, it's a book about being 7 in a world of people who are bigger than you, and more dangerous, and stepping into territory that you don't entirely understand.

Loyalty was a great thing, but no lieutenants should be forced to choose between their leader and a circus with elephants.

I'm never, I hope, stupid enough to believe that Twitter or blogging or any of this stuff is a substitute for actually doing the work or writing a book.

We do not always remember the things that do no credit to us. We justify them, cover them in bright lies or with the thick dust of forgetfulness. All of the things that Shadow had done in his life of which he was not proud, all the things he wished he had done otherwise or left undone, came at him then in a swirling storm of guilt and regret and shame, and he had nowhere to hide from them. He was as naked and as open as a corpse on a table, and dark Anubis the jackal god was his prosector and his prosecutor and his persecutor.

I think...that I would rather recollect a life mis-spent on fragile things than spent avoiding moral debt.

Truly, life is wasted on the living, Nobody Owens. For one of us is too foolish to live, and it is not I.

For a moment he thought she was about to hit him, which would have been bad, or even start crying, which would have been much, much worse.