“. . . I had found the edge. The place where you unstrap all your fastenings to the earth, to what you are what you have been, where you flame out on the edge of the spheres, and the sun and moon be...”

“And every good artist knows that the gift comes from somewhere else, and it's there for a reason, and that's to make the world a better place.”

“Humility is not a virtue in a writer, it is an absolute necessity.”

“I looked at Lucas with the pang that a parent feels when he knows his child will be hurt and that it's no one's fault and that to try to preempt the rites of passage is an act of contempt for the c...”

“Some people say you pick up the Dirty Boogie where you left it off. Others say you pick it up where you would have been had you never gotten off it.”

“writing is like being in love. You never get better at it or learn more about it. The day you think you do is the day you lose it. Robert Frost called his work a lover's quarrel with the world. It'...”

“Blackjack," Percy said, "this is Piper and Jason. They're friends."The horse nickered."Uh, maybe later," Percy answered.Piper had heard that Percy could speak to horses, being the son of the horse ...”

“It's hard to walk away from a winning streak, even harder to leave the table when you're on a losing one.”

“God alert!" Blackjack yelled. "It's the wine dude!Mr. D sighed in exasperation. "The next person, or horse, who calls me the 'wine dude' will end up in a bottle of Merlot!”

“He was, however, unable to give much prolonged or continuous thought to anything that evening , or to concentrate on any one idea; and anyway, even if he had been able to, he would not have found h...”

“Nature can counsel nothing but crime.”

“A criminal remains a criminal whether he uses a convict's suit or a monarch's crown.”

“It would be hard to degrade yourself, if you don't have to rely on others to define your worth.”