“Two questions form the foundation of all novels: "What if?" and "What next?" (A third question, "What now?", is one the author asks himself every 10 minutes or so; but it's more a cry than a question.) Every novel begins with the speculative question, What if "X" happened? That's how you start.”

“Player: Relax. Respond. That's what people do. You can't go through life questioning your situation at every turn.”

“Life was such a strange thing, so permanent when one had it, so fleeting when it was lost- and those who lost it could never tell you what it was like, could they?”

“Fix your eyes forward on what you can do, not back on what you cannot change.”

“What the government is good at is collecting taxes, taking away your freedoms and killing people. It's not good at much else.”

“Of all human lamentations, without doubt, the most common is if only I had known. But we can't know, and so days of death and fire so often begin no differently than those of love and warmth.”

“Christ, how did you ever get this screwed up! his mind demanded ofhim. He knew the answer, but even that was not a full explanation.Different segments of the organism called John Terrance Kelly knewdifferent parts of the whole story,but somehow they'd never all come together, leaving the separatefragments of what had ...once been a tough, smart, decisive and to blunderabout in confusion - and despair! There was a happy thought.”