It was like drowning, only from the inside out.

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

The town has a sense, not of history, but of time, and the telephone poles seem to know this. If you lay your hand against one, you can feel the vibration from the wires deep within the wood, as if souls had been imprisoned in there and were struggling to get out.

If a writer knows what he or she is doing, I'll go along for the ride. If he or she doesn't... well, I'm in my fifties now, and there are a lot of books out there. I don't have time to waste with the poorly written ones.

I don't like the idea that I am going to come back as an ant or a sparrow if I don't get along in the great karma of life.

...they came to see what happened to their town, to see if it was indeed lying burnt and bleeding. Many of them also came to die.

The rope by which the great blocks of taxes are attached to any citizenry is simple loyalty.