“Forensics had taught her that scars left tissue much tougher than skin.”

“No, that's because there are more interesting things to do."Her grandmother looked at her sharply. "Like cutting into dead bodies"Carmeryn swallowed back her irration. "Yeah-the live one kick too much.”

“I've decided that I can also touch the hearts of many - dead people, but the living, too. (Cameryn Mahoney)”

“Life may suck but death is worse.”

“Gillette--The best a man can get."I stared at the screen. What happened to me? I was meant to be one of those guys, vigorous and athletic and successful and, most of all, American. I was going to walk on the moon, be a movie star or a rock got or a comedian. I was going to have an amazing life and kids with Helen and die like Chaplin a thousand years from now in my Beverly Hills mansion surrounded by my adoring family, with the grieving world media standing by. Instead, I was just another show-business mediocrity. A drunk who shat his pants and ran for help. My life had been careless and selfish. Pleasure in the moment was my only thought, my solitary motivation. I had disappointed whoever had been foolish enough to love me, and left them scarred. I was a very long way from being the best a man can get.”

“Those unexpected morality lessons provided by the trip had jolted me into some kind of action. It was time to jettison the past before the present jettisoned me. This was my first veiled attempt at recovery. Although perhaps I was just running away again. I returned to Glasgow, planning to say a final goodbye to Anne and get out of her life, but ended up drinking with buddies in the Chip Bar and never seeing her. I called her instead to say I was moving to London and told her she could have the house and everything else we owned, which wasn't much. I think she was as relieved as I was that I was leaving town for good.”

“So much of what we talked of can never be written. It was born and grew and developed but not visibly. There was no theatre. What was, remains within me, and will never leave it for it has become part of me. There are great regions in what I write to you that must stay unexpressed. The poles of feeling, the best or worst, have to be left unsaid. There must be areas of silence. It has to be.”