I think what you do is, you keep your sensors open. And it's - the more that you do the job, the more you come to understand in a kind of intuitive way that you're always - you know, your radar is on. And the thing is going around and around and around. And it's not picking up any blips.

I realized the shells were talking in a voice I recognized. I should have; it was my own. Had I always known that? I suppose I had. On some level, unless we're mad, I think most of us know the various voices of our own imaginations. And of our memories, of course. They have voices, too. Ask anyone who has ever lost a limb or a child or a long-cherished dream. Ask anyone who blames himself for a bad decision, usually made in a raw instant (an instant that is most commonly red). Our memories have voices, too. Often sad ones that clamor like raised arms in the dark.

Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.

...you need openness and inability to do anything other than get to the point.

A little talent is a good thing to have if you want to be a writer. But the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar.

There was a lot they didn’t tell you about death, she had discovered, and one of the biggies was how long it took the ones you loved most to die in your heart.

As a kid, death seemed boring to me. As an adult, I think that it seems more like a waste of everything. Somebody once said every time a professor dies, a library burns.