“Do you want the truth or fiction?”

“This, I suppose, is part of being human, learning from our losses how better to appreciate what is left in their wake.”

“I don't, when I think of a city, think of these people, people with very little who are content with that. That is, I think about poverty and culture and traffic and pollution and crime...”

“Many cultures accept the faulty nature of memory. They know even the photograph only gets it halfway right. They believe there is only one way to bring the dead back to life, story.”

“If I drag it up from the bottom of the river, if I dig deep into that muddy floor and pull it up, even if I get most of it wrong, is it mine to tell?”

“There are televisions and radios and the sounds of life, but too there is the sound of death, crying and oxygen tanks, and the squeaky wheels on wheelchairs. Like life and death are in a very close...”

“But who can remember pain, once its over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.”

“I know what you are learning to endure. There is nothing to be done. Make sure nothing is wasted. Take notes. Remember it all, every insult, every tear. Tattoo it on the inside of your mind. In lif...”

“My mind, I know, I can prove, hovers on hummingbird wings. It hovers and it churns. And when it's operating at full thrust, the churning does not stop. The machines do not rest, the systems rarely ...”

“Tell the story that's been growing in your heart, the characters you can't keep out of your head, the tale story that speaks to you, that pops into your head during your daily commute, that wakes y...”

“I write for the kid in me. . . . Often when Im working on a story, Ill find myself laughing at something my characters have done, or even being surprised at where theyve taken the story. Its as if ...”

“If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another.”

“The truth." Dumbledore sighed. "It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution.”

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”

“Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.”