[Imagination] must be visited constantly, or else it begins to become restless and emit strange bellows at embarrassing moments; ignoring it only makes it grow larger and noisier.

Love is an obsolete emotion, ranking in usefulness somewhere between earwigs and toe mold.

What?" It was a good word. Like a rock in a river, sticking up to let you land on it, so you could make your way across the flow.

I do not want to choose which one of you I must love or hate. Here, I am free to do neither. I want no part of your bitterness.

Epics are never written about libraries. They exist on whim; it depends on if the conquering army likes to read.

But even in the schoolyard I'd been aware of that silence, that reserve in him, as though he'd been raised by foxes and language was his second language.

Imagination is best fed by reality, an odd diet for something nonexistent there are few details of daily life and its broad range of emotional context that can't be transformed into food for the imagination.