I spend eight months outlining and researching the novel before I begin to write a single word of the prose.
Where did phobias come from? Sachs wondered. Some childhood trauma, some genetic imprinting.
In a moment the two men were on their bellies, hands bound behind them with Monadnock restraints. Other agents entered the house, searched it and then returned, calling, “Clear.” Claire.
Speculation about the past is inefficient. And therefore irrelevant to achieving your goal. So.
Loving was playing a Bayesian game now, one modeled on imperfect information.
Natural selection applies to criminal activity, as well as to newts and simians.
Knuckle time” referred to those moments when you have to go up against your worst fears.
I want to say something,” I told her. “It’s important.” “Under these circumstances,” she said, with a dark grin, “one wouldn’t really expect unimportant, now, would one?
Playing chess or Go or Tigris and Euphrates – a very good game, by the way – I can watch people as they choose their strategy and note how they respond to something I’ve done. Even.
When you write something by hand, slowly, you own the words. You type them, less so. You read them, even less. And you listen, hardly at all.
Remember, people hassle you in all sorts of different ways. Don’t assume they’re right and you’re wrong just because they know something you don’t. The question is: Do you need to know it to do a better job? Then learn it. If not, it’s a distraction and to hell with it.
We tugged on door levers and jumped out, all our jackets fluttering in the wet breeze. I was limping – the toe still stung like crazy. DuBois and I moved in slowly, behind the eight armed tactical officers, who were sprinting into Yu’s open garage, brandishing weapons. “On the ground, FBI! FBI!” Screaming is standard operating procedure too. Intimidation, again. In.
A fool can throw a stone into a pond that a dozen wise men can’t recover.
Depression depleted your energy; the main cause of suicide was a deadly fusion of hopelessness, anxiety and panic.
He didn’t want to die on Monday. It seemed common.
You can’t lick a murder weapon, Lincoln.” “Where’s that written down, Mel? I don’t remember reading that.
Harvard biologist and entomologist E. O. Wilson’s coined term “Biofilia,” by which he means the emotional affiliation humans feel toward other living organisms.
Either find a solution to your problem, or stop considering it a problem.
Confused?” “Not really. To be confused you have to be paying attention.
Like most soldiers, he’d wielded a Black and Decker steam iron far more frequently than an M16.
Nobody ever chooses to be a victim.’ The more I looked at this report, the more I wondered: What if somebody did choose to be a victim?