...a really good friend, the kind of friend who - when they were together both of them were more able to be who they really were.

Hiding under the bed doesn't make the worry stop.

...When this map was made, there was only empty forest in the south, Gran told Birle.Not empty, Granda corrected her. The forest is never empty.

I was no scholar in college, and was arrogant about what I thought.

The worst things weren't outside of you.

Even the bad books I write are satisfying. I'm my least critical reader.

But I'll tell you something else, too. Something I've learned, the hard way. I guess—Gram laughed a little—I'm the kind of person who has to learn things the hard way. You've got to hold on. Hold on to people. They can get away from you. It's not always going to be fun, but if you don't—hold on—then you lose them.

You could say that all of life is a series of last chances.

If I'm writing by intuition, generally that calculation works itself out. But if I'm writing a mystery, and somebody has to have a reason for doing what he's doing, and it's not anything I can imagine myself wanting to do, things get a little more difficult to write, and careless mistakes are made.

She couldn’t get any farther away inside from her skin. She couldn’t get away.

She looked at her hand: Just some hand, holding a cheap pen. Some girls’ hand. She had nothing to do with that hand. Let that hand do whatever it wanted to.

You must not let yourself become too respectable. Keep yourself a little wild. What is life for, if not for the living of it?

I love teaching I love little kids.

I got to thinking—when it was too late—you have to reach out to people. To your family, too. You can't just let them sit there, you should put your hand out. If they slap it back, well you reach out again if you care enough. If you don't care enough, you forget about them, if you can.

Kids are really tougher than adults, but we tend to forget this in an affluent society that lets kids indulge themselves.