Superhero movies and comic books teach a lesson that runs directly counter to the culture-of-violence idea: guns are for bad guys too cowardly to fight like men.

Only God gets things right the first time.

If you were a real fascistic society and you had a vocal minority that was shouting, "Stop this, stop that, stop the other thing," what you would say is, "Let's give them all the drugs they want." In a lot of states, something very much like that happened. They lowered the drinking age to eighteen and said, "Get juiced."

What's been tried once had been tried once before... and before... and before...

The writer's original perception of a character or characters may be as erroneous as the reader's.

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

The first thing was to get down to Addie Richardson's henhouse, and that was a goodish way, four or five miles. She found herself wondering if the Lord was going to send her an eagle to fly her those four miles, or send Elijah in his fiery chariot to give her a lift. Blasphemy," she told herself complacently. "The Lord provides strength, not taxicabs.