“Adolescence is usually typified by an unanswerable combination of innocence and insolence.”

“Writing takes a combination of sophistication and innocence; it takes conscience, our belief that something is beautiful because it is right.”

“Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable.”

“How shall I typify what happened? Passion play? Somewhat. Weird tale? Indubitably. Horror story? Pretty close. Grotesque melodrama? Certainly. Black comedy? Your point of view will determine that. Perhaps it was a combination of them all... So, to the story. A chronicle of greed and cruelty, horror and rapacity, sadism and murder. Love, American style.”

“Dreams of innocence are just that; they usually depend on a denial of reality that can be its own form of hubris.”

“Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.”