Writing is self-taught. Consulting other people only teaches you to depend on their reactions, which may or may not be legitimate. Quit looking for approval ... Learn to evaluate your own work with a dispassionate eye ... the lessons you acquire will be all the more valuable because you've mastered your craft from within.

He might be a man without character, but she was a woman without courage. Of the two, which was worse?

Grief rolled across the space between us like a wash of salt water.

All of us are subjected to somebody else's power at some point. So once in a while you kiss ass. So what? Either you make your peace with that early, or you end up living your life as a crank and a misfit.

There are laws for everything except the harm families do.

Ideas are easy. It's the execution of ideas that really separates the sheep from the goats.

It's been my observation, after years in the [insurance] business, that a certain percent of the population simply can't resist the urge to cheat.