Teaching school is like having jumper cables hooked to your brain, draining all the juice out of you.

The real importance of reading is that it creates an ease & intimacy with the process of writing... It also offers you a constantly growing knowledge of what has been done and what hasn't, what is trite and what is fresh, what works and what lies there dying (or dead) on the page. The more you read, the less apt you are to make a fool of yourself with your pen or word processor.

Kindle, isn’t it?” the waitress asked. “I got one for Christmas, and I love it. I’m reading my way through all of Jodi Picoult’s books.” “Oh, probably not all of them,” Wesley said. “Huh? Why not?” “She’s probably got another one done already. That’s all I meant.” “And James Patterson’s probably written one since he got up this morning!” she said, and went off chortling.

Do you know how cruel your God can be, David. How fantastically cruel?...Sometimes he makes us live.

All you imagined, no matter how wild it might seem, was no more than a disguised version of what you already knew.

...stupidity is one of the two things we see most clearly in retrospect. The other is missed chances.

and then woe is you, Pauly. Woe to the max.