if you tell yourself the great lie of bad art-that you are in charge-your chance at the truth will be lost. The truth isn't always pretty.

Murder is like potato chips: you can't stop with just one.

The dream might have been more than a dream. It was as if a door in the wall of reality had come ajar... and now all sorts of unwelcome things were flying through.

Listening to it was like having a mud-slimed piece of silk drawn lightly back and forth across her face.

Sometimes the things presented to us as choices aren't choices at all.

Bad writing is more than a matter of (expletive deleted) syntax and faulty observation; bad writing usually arises from a stubborn refusal to tell stories about what people actually do to face the fact, let us say, that murderers sometimes help old ladies cross the street.

There are a great many ways to commit suicide you know.