If you've ever been homesick, or felt exiled from all the things and people that once defined you, you'll know how important welcoming words and friendly smiles can be.

The past is obdurate.

I like to get ten pages a day, which amounts to 2,000 words. That’s 180,000 words over a three-month span, a goodish length for a book — something in which the reader can get happily lost, if the tale is done well and stays fresh.

It was the possibility of darkness that made the day seem so bright.

On that gray street, with the smell of industrial smokes in the air and the afternoon bleeding away to evening, downtown Derry looked only marginally more charming than a dead hooker in a church pew.

If I have to spend time in purgatory before going to one place or the other, I guess I'll be all right as long as there's a lending library.

Lover," she whispers, and closes her eyes. It falls upon her. Love is like dying.