It's a cash and carry world. Sometimes you pay a little. Mostly it's a lot. Sometimes, it's everything you have.

They walked back into the world together, wearing the gift that had been given them: just life. Pity was not love, Barbie reflected...but if you were a child, giving clothes to someone who was naked had to be a step in the right direction.

Talent is a dull knife that will cut nothing unless it is wielded with great force.

When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, 'Why god? Why me?' and the thundering voice of God answered, 'There's just something about you that pisses me off.'

By writing a horror novel where this inexplicable disorder takes over in our ordered lives, you make order look better by comparison. But below that, there's a part of us that responds to the Who bashing their instruments to pieces on the stage. There's a very primitive part that says, "Do it some more."

It hurt, of course, but more often than not the best things do, I've found.

Sometimes a cigar is just a smoke and a story's just a story