Grief, he said, is carnivorous.

And often the worst thing wasn't the victims--they were dead, after all, and beyond any more pain. The worst thing was those who loved them and survived them. Often the walking dead from now on, shell-shocked, hearts ruptured, stumbling through the remainder of their lives without anything left inside of them but blood and organs, impervious to pain, having learned nothing except that the worst things did, in fact, sometimes happen. (Mystic River)

Teddy wondered, and not for the first time, not by a long shot, if this was the day that missing her would finally be too much for him.

There are so many more important things to worry about than how you're perceived by strangers.

I believe so deeply in the primacy of language, in lifting your prose to the highest level you're capable of and making your words symphonic.

Patrick Kenzie asking a bemused waitress for a newspaper in smalltown USA. 'It’s like a homepage without a scroll button?