“If it is true that nature abhors a vacuum, then criminality regards it as a business opportunity.”

“He became merely the broken statue of a beast, now without another's fear to animate it.”

“I think the act of reading imbues the reader with a sensitivity toward the outside world that people who don't read can sometimes lack. I know it seems like a contradiction in terms; after all read...”

“When one encounters enough strangeness, then what is strange ultimately becomes familiar.The mind can accommodate itself to almost anything, given time: pain, grief, loss, even the possibility that...”

“Once upon a time for that is how all stories should begin there was a boy who lost his mother.”

“We are not meant to know the time or the nature of our deaths (for all of us secretly hope that we may be immortal).”

“If my life were a movie ... the title sequence would start out like a typical high school story, but then reveal that something's amiss. There'd be a tight shot, or piece of dialogue, or something ...”

“A good tanto is a nasty thing, and when the point entered a human neck, it was like the last period in a biography.”

“Faithfully, Calvi was following the rules to the letter. He knew one thing: Whatever was in that document had caused the death of the leader of the Catholic Church. Whod be next?”

“Crap. I was hopin all things ugly had been raptured, but youre still muckin up the planet.We must share the same faith, honey. Cause beauty checked out when you showed up.”

“Sometimes in the winter, when the fog rolled in and silenced the waves, it felt as if death had its fingers around my neck. Fingers like frostbitten twigs that made me ache inside.”

“Do as little harm to others as you can; make any sacrifice for your true friends; be responsible for yourself and ask nothing of others; and grab all the fun you can. Don't give much thought to yes...”