I guess I just couldn't see standing there -- alive, talking, thinking, breathing, being -- one second, and dead the next. It really bothered me. Death by violence isn't the same as dying any other way, accident or disease or old age. It just ain't the same.

I'm a good judge of my own work.

Anything you read can influence your work, so I try to read good stuff.

Your mother is not crazy. Neither, contrary to popular belief, is your brother. He is merely miscast in a play. He would have made the perfect knight in a different century, or a very good pagan prince in a time of heroes. He was born in the wrong era, on the wrong side of the river, with the ability to do anything and finding nothing he wants to do.

That's why people don't ever think to blame the Socs and are always ready to jump on us. We look hoody and they look decent. It could be just the other way around - half of the hoods I know are pretty decent guys underneath all that grease, and from what I've heard, a lot of Socs are just cold-blooded mean - but people usually go by looks.

Mace, you never read Smoky the Cowhorse,did you? No. Well,ol' Smoky, he had somebad things happen to him,had the heart knocked clean out of him.But he hung on and came out of it okay.I've been bashed up pretty good,Mason, but I'm going to make it.

...people get hurt in rumbles, maybe killed. I'm sick of it because it doesn't do any good. You can't win...even if you whip us. You'll still be where you were before- at the bottom. And we'll still be the lucky ones with all the breaks. So it doesn't do any good, the fighting and the killing. It doesn't prove a thing.