You know how writers are... they create themselves as they create their work. Or perhaps they create their work in order to create themselves.

O my son Absalom,' Bean said softly, knowing for the first time the kind of anguish that could tear such words from a man’s mouth. 'my son, my son Absalom. Would God I could die for thee, O Absalom, my son. My sons!

Where loyalty bound creatures together, they became something larger, something new and whole and inexplicable.

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

The opposite of the happy ending is not actually the sad ending-the sad ending is sometimes the happy ending. The opposite of the happy ending is actually the unsatisfying ending.

Happiness is not a life without pain, but rather a life in which the pain is traded for a worthy price.

That was interesting, to find that it wasn't hunger that caused children to become bullies on the street. The bulliness was already in the child, and whatever the stakes were, they would find a way to act as they needed to act. … Intelligence and education, which all these children had, apparently didn't make any important difference in human nature.