“We all have the best laid plans for our children, and they go and ruin it all by growing up any way they want to. What the hell was it all for, then? (Real Life and Liars)”

“I hope someday she meets just the right man and has babies - a whole passel of babies, more than I could have - so she understands how it kills me now that she won't let me hug her when she's in obvious distress. (The Life You've Imagined)”

“When I was a kid, my mom once told me that God was an artist and how on occasion He’d throw a bucketful of paint across the sky for us all to see. I asked her why the paint disappeared by morning, and she told me that if the sky was always like that we might take it for granted. I suppose she was right. Maybe that’s what war is all about—so we can appreciate times of peace.”

“What's your job?" He looked blank. "I've forgotten...""I'm a writer. A novelist.""Maybe that explains why you were going to hell," Raziel said in a wry voice.”

“But there was something else. A feeling of understanding, a comfort that defied reason. It was as though kissing her, a near stranger, would have made all the sense in the world.”

“Fear about what, exactly?''Everything,' I said. 'But mostly just the realization that all it takes is one moment for your entire world to turn upside down. One wrong decision, and it's over.”

“Because when I look at you and talk to you, all I think about is fucking.”