Being paid well for something you love to do – it’s a grace.
Anger is a violent emotion, vindictive, and as dangerous to he who is driven by it as to anyone on whom it is turned.
I’m small, I’m young – and I’m so different. You’ve always respected that difference, and you’ve always trusted it. Trust me now. There’s a reason I am the way I am, and there’s a reason I was born to you. There’s always a reason. We belong together.
Only once in a generation does anything as fresh as a vomiting detective come along.
Every writer has his own voice. Other than that I’m always trying to do change-ups and publishers haven’t always been happy about that.
Sometimes many publishers prefer that you write the same book every time, but I have a low boredom threshold so that isn’t going to happen.
To many people, free will is a license to rebel not against what is unjust or hard in life but against what is best for them and true.
I build a book the way coral reefs are built: millions of little calcareous skeletons piling up one atop another, though in my case the skeletons are drafts.
In self-defense and in defense of the innocent, cowardice is the only sin.
Once you have had a wonderful dog, a life without one, is a life diminished.
Intuition is seeing with the soul.
Change isn’t easy. Changing the way you live means changing the way you think, means changing what you believe about life. That’s hard.
All human lives are so profoundly and intricately entwined-those dead, those living, those generations yet to come-that the fate of all is the fate of each, and the hope of humanity rests in every heart and in every pair of hands.
Books showed me that there were other ways to live a life.
My life has a mysterious purpose that I don’t understand, and day by day, conflict by conflict, I learn by going where I have to go.
As long as I have laughter, I am not without hope.
Pain can be endured and defeated only if it is embraced. Denied or feared, it grows.
I work on one page, revising and polishing until I can’t make it better, then move on to the next. Some pages might get 20 or more drafts before I move on.
Sorrow is not a raven perched persistently above a chamber door. Sorrow is a thing with teeth, and while in time it retreats, it comes back at the whisper of it’s name.
Grief is a healthy emotion, and it’s healthy to embrace it. By accepting loss, we clarify our values and the meaning of our lives.