History is no more fixed and dead than the future. The past is no further away than the last breath you took.

How do you politely explain to someone that you had believed for years he was a moron as well as a Fool?

I began reading everyhing in the family library. Kidnapped, Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe. And of course, if you're running out of books to read you can always read Shakespeare.

No man is so dangerous as the man who cannot decide what he fears.

You can be the dead fish. I'll be the old stick

To be honest, I don't think of any of my characters as minor characters - they're all the main characters in a story that I don't necessarily get to tell.

I thought we had lost you. I thought we'd done something worse than let you die.' His old arms were tight and strong about me. I was kind to the old man. I did not tell him they had.