She felt like someone who drowns remembering what it was like to still be on the boat, so calm and at ease, so carelessly safe

Was it pretty? Your country. . .your land?" "It was beautiful," the gunslinger said. "There were fields and forests and rivers and mists in the morning. But that's only pretty. My mother used to say that the only real beauty is order and love and light.

For me, that emotional payoff is what it’s all about. I want you to laugh or cry when you read a story...or do both at the same time. I want your heart, in other words. If you want to learn something, go to school.

I think most of us can remember from our own childhood, just in the Disney cartoons, things that frightened us profoundly. For me it was Bambi, the scene when the forest was on fire. That was something I had nightmares about. I can't imagine being a little kid of eight and seeing Night Of The Living Dead with living corpses eating the flesh of living people.

Are you sure self-pity is a luxury you can afford, Jack?

Time apparently did nothing but blunt grief’s sharpest edge so that it hacked rather than sliced.

Remember that 'plumber in space' is not such a bad setup for a story.