“I stopped keeping an eye out for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve because, when I was five, my mother told me that Santa was a wicked pervert who would cut off my peepee with a pair of scissors...if I didn't stop chattering about him, he would be certain to put me on his list and look me up.Christmas was never the same after that, but at least I still have my peepee.”

“If anyone in your publishing life were to argue against a particular book or a career aspiration for reasons you had not already pondered and rejected after careful analysis, if they dazzled you with brilliant new considerations, then you’d have to back off and revisit your decisions. But what I was told never dazzled me. For example, I was often advised, by different people, that my work would never gain a big audience because my vocabulary was too large.”

“I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph.”

“You know who used to scare me when I was a little kid? Snuggle the Bear.""Do I know Snuggle?""In those TV ads for that fabric softener. Somebody would say how soft their robe was or their towels, and Snuggle the teddy bear would be hiding behind a pillow or creeping around under a chair, giggling.""He was just happy that people were pleased.""No, it was maniacal little giggle. And his eyes were glazed. And how did he get in all those houses to hide and giggle?""You're saying Snuggle should've been charged with B and E?""Absolutely. Most of the time when he giggled, he covered his mouth with one paw. I always thought he didn't want you to see his teeth.""Snuggle had bad teeth?" she asked."I figured they were rows of tiny vicious fangs he was hiding. When I was maybe four or five, I used to have nightmares where I'd be in bed with a teddy bear, and it was Snuggle, and he was trying to chew open my jugular and suck the lifeblood out of me."She said, "So much about you suddenly makes more sense than it ever did before.""Maybe if we aren't cops someday, we can open a toy shop.""Can we run a toy shop and have guns?""I don't see why not," he said.”

“When Victoria told me how intensely she hated me, I kept the Beretta aimed at her face, but heard myself say, "I don't hate you."She called me an effing liar and said, "Hate makes the world go around. Envy, lust and hate.""I stopped hating anyone the day when I realized hating can't restore to me anything that's lost.”

“I thought you married me for my looks, my sensitivity, and my fabulous bedroom stamina."Carson said, "Lucky for you, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But I will acknowledge you really do an exhaustive job cleaning the bedroom.”

“It's only life. We all get through it. Not all of us complete the journey in the same condition. Along the way, some lose their legs or eyes in acidents or altercations, while others skate through the years with nothing worse to worry about than an occassional bad-hair day.I still possessed both legs and both eyes, and even my hair looked all right when I rose that Wednesday morning in late January. If I returned to bed sixteen hours later, having lost all my hair but nothing else, I would consider the day a triumph. Even minus a few teeth, I'd call it a triumph.”