Advertising tends to be most effective in jogging finally into action those people who are well-enough disposed towards a product, but have not yet got around to buying it.

For a moment he felt a wild hope: perhaps this really was a nightmare. Perhaps he would awake in his own bed, bathed in sweat, shaking, maybe even crying . . . but alive. Safe. Then he pushed the thought away. Its charm was deadly, its comfort fatal.

And in real life endings aren't always neat, whether they're happy endings, or whether they're sad endings.

Oh, there were all sorts of things to wonder about, but the truth was simple: here stood this door alone on an endless stretch of beach, and it was for only one of two things: opening or leaving closed.

Writers are often the worst judges of what they have written.

The bad ideas kind of just drop out of the mix. You forget about them. The good ones stick around.

Lover," she whispers, and closes her eyes. It falls upon her. Love is like dying.