I knowed a man in Paphlagonia who'd swallow a live snake every morning, when he got up. He used to say, he was certain of one thing, that nothing worse would happen to him all day. 'Course they made him eat a bowlful of hairy centipedes before they hung him, so maybe that claim was a bit presumptive.

What makes you think I'm giving you a ride?” “Because I'm a damsel in distress,” she said. “And you are a knight in whatever. A really dirty car.

It would have been hard for Fat Charlie to say exactly when the accumulation of birds on the wire mesh moved from interesting to terrifying. It was somewhere in the first hundred or so, anyway. And it was in the way they didn't coo, or caw, or trill, or song. They simply landed on the wire, and they watched him.

He had gone beyond the world of metaphor and simile into the place of things that are, and it was changing him.

Being brave doesn't mean you aren't scared. Being brave means you are scared, really scared, badly scared, and you do the right thing anyway.

We make choices. No one else can live our lives for us. And we must confront and accept the consequences of our actions.

Stories may well be lies, but they are good lies that say true things, and which can sometimes pay the rent.