The shining. It was a good name, a comforting name, because she had always thought of it as a dark thing.

I was being paid to do what I loved, and there's no gig on earth better than that; it's like a license to steal.

Remember in elementary school you were told that in case of fire you have to line up quietly in a single file from smallest to tallest? What is the logic in that? What, do tall people burn slower?

Somebody asked Somerset Maugham about his place in the pantheon of writers, and he said, "I'm in the very front row of the second rate." I'm sort of haunted by that.

Speaking personally, you can have my gun, but you'll take my book when you pry my cold, dead fingers off of the binding.

I've given up thinking - it keeps getting me into trouble.

Fault always lies in the same place: with him weak enough to lay blame.