“Her fear was strong, but her need for the truth was stronger.”

“We all make mistakes, the danger lies in letting those mistakes make us. Make us believe we can't put things right. Make us think there's no hope. Make us give up.”

“Well, it seems to me that there are books that tell stories, and then there are books that tell truths... The first kind, they show you life like you want it to be. With villains getting what they ...”

“DNA tells you all the secrets of life, he used to say. Except for onehow to live it.”

“You can't argue with the dead, no matter what you say, they always have the last word.”

“I think your vision gets better as you get older.”

“All words are pegs to hang ideas on.”

“A word is not the same with one writer as it is with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket.”

“No doubt I shall go on writing, stumbling across tundras of unmeaning, planting words like bloody flags in my wake....”

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”