“No cheap tricks.”

“Every fictioneer re-invents the world because the facts, things or people of the received world are unacceptable.”

“The trick to saying the word cock, is to do it like you have one in your mouth.”

“There are some people who say they’re able to ‘compartmentalize’ things, as though it is possible to put negative or distressing thoughts into neat mental drawers to be taken out only at a psychologically convenient time. It’s a beguiling idea, but I’ve never bought it. In my experience, sadness and regret seek into one’s consciousness willy-nilly, or they suddenly leap out at you with a snarl. The only real remedy is time…”

“He had dirty-blond good looks to match a dirty-good smile. Yes, dirty. There was just enough twinkle in his smiling brown eyes to suggest there might be all manner of naughty-guy impulses rattling around that cute body of his.”

“I was leaving.Finally.For good.There was only one way I'd ever return to the town of Christmas, Florida, and it involved my dead body.”

“The faint bruise on the side of her cheek had paled to a sickly yellow.Imagine that. She'd fallen in the shower. Again.Just ask Daddy.”