It didn´t occur to me until later that there´s another truth, very simple: greed in a good cause is still greed.

Outside, daylight was bleeding slowly toward dusk.

But who can foresee such things? None of us can predict the final outcomes of our actions, and few of us even try; most of us just do what we do to prolong a moment's pleasure or to stop the pain. And even when we act for the noblest reasons, the last link of the chain all too often drips with someone's blood.

I've met talespinners before, Jake, and they're all cut more or less from the same cloth. They tell tales because they're afraid of life.

I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was 12 - Jesus, did you?

You cannot condemn a man for what may only be a figment of your own imagination.

Most books about writing are filled with bullshit. Fiction writers, present company included, don’t understand very much about what they do—not why it works when it’s good, not why it doesn’t when it’s bad.