“Painting is a great outlet for those inner emotions you cannot get out any other way.”

“Hurt no more, fear no more, cry no more.”

“Sometimes we try to hard to be something we are not, perhaps being ourselves is harder than we think.”

“But if they loved each other so much, couldn’t they talk it out?” Toby gave an exasperated laugh. “You get into habits. Ways of being with certain people.”

“haven’t you figured out yet that happy is a momentary emotion? If you spend your life trying to be happy, you’ll always come up short. Contentment is an emotion that will withstand the storms around you. Focus on that, and you won’t feel like you’ve failed at the end of your life.”“So, you’re saying I shouldn’t focus on happiness,” “Enjoy it when it comes, but don’t measure your life against it.”

“When strangers on a train or a plane ask what I do for a living, I say, "I kill people." This response makes for a short conversation. No eye contact and no sudden movement from my seat-mate. Only peace and quiet. Rare is the fellow passenger who asks why I do it.I suppose I got tired hanging out in a book all day waiting for a story to begin. I write the kind of novels I want to read. And why the theme of solving murders? Violent death is larger than life and it's the great equalizer. By law, every victim is entitled to a paladin and a chase, else life would be cheapened.And the real reason I do this? My brain is simply bent this way. There is nothing else I would rather do. This neatly chains into my theory of the writing life. If you scratch an artist, under the skin you will find a bum who cannot hold down a real job. Conversely, if you scratch a bum... but I have never done that.The heart of my theory has puritan roots: if you love what you do, you cannot call it honest work.”

“Write the book you want to read, the one you cannot find.”