Do not shout at me, Mr. Quill," said John [Adams]. "Justice may be blind, but she is not deaf.

Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don't see any.

Quing-Jao: I am a slave to the gods, and I rejoice in it. Jane: A slave who rejoices is a slave indeed.

Bean could see the hunger in their eyes. Not the regular hunger, for food, but the real hunger, the deep hunger, for family, for love, for belonging.

I stole their future from them; I can only being to repay by seeing what I can learn from their past.

I wonder sometimes if the motivation for writers ought to be contempt, not admiration.

History is an omlette. THe eggs are already broken.