“I wrote my name on the list 10 years ago, and under the date I wrote “In the future.” But how’d I know I’d show up, and not my clone posing as me?”

“My tunes and numbers are here. They have filled my years, the years when I refused to die. And in order to do that I wrote, I wrote, I wrote, at noon or 3:00 A.M.So as not to be dead.”

“Will you ever forgive me? " I shot back, leveling my gaze directly into his eyes.He stared into them for a few moments and then got up silently and headed for the door. He didn't turn around when he reached it. Just grabbed the doorknob and held it."No," he said, without facing me. "Maybe it makes me a bad parent, but I don't know if I can. No matter what the police found, you were involved in that shooting, Valerie. You wrote those names on that list. You wrote my name on that list. You had a good life here. You may not have pulled the trigger, but you helped cause the tragedy."Hate List”

“You know what I did after I wrote my first novel? I shut up and wrote twenty-three more."("The Castle")”

“Still. Four words.And I didn’t realize it until a couple of days ago, when someone wrote in to my blog:Dear Neil,If you could choose a quote - either by you or another author - to be inscribed on the wall of a public library children’s area, what would it be?Thanks!LynnI pondered a bit. I’d said a lot about books and kids’ reading over the years, and other people had said things pithier and wiser than I ever could. And then it hit me, and this is what I wrote: I’m not sure I’d put a quote up, if it was me, and I had a library wall to deface. I think I’d just remind people of the power of stories, and why they exist in the first place. I’d put up the four words that anyone telling a story wants to hear. The ones that show that it’s working, and that pages will be turned: “… and then w”

“She had a picture of a llama, so under it I wrote, “I didn’t know you knew my brother.”