It is only through fiction and the dimension of the imaginary that we can learn something real about individual experience. Any other approach is bound to be general and abstract.

Democrats and Republicans were essentially the same party with different faces and that was why, no matter how many promises each leader made, significant change rarely transpired.

The ocean drummed as loud as pulsating blood, eroding the sand, rushing the beach as if it had a point to prove. And like many things, it receded, was gone, and was replaced anew.

You two are bound to one another. You always have been … and you can't run away from what you are. No matter where you go, your feelings for her are going to follow you.

As he drove away from his handiwork, knowing he'd left no survivors, the killer looked at the rising smoke and gave himself a pat on the back for another assignment well done...

We couldn’t believe our luck, and for a little while it felt like we were on some big train rolling down a hill, and all we cared about was how great it felt to be going fast.

I recalled something I’d read a long time ago about Satan. When he appeared, it wouldn’t be as a demon but as an ordinary-looking guy with a convincing message of peace.

Bill is a fiction writer, but he writes in the first-person voice in a style that is tell-all confessional; in fact, his fiction sounds as much like a memoir as he can make it sound.

I decided to coin the term 'cosy crime noir' for Brighton Belle. That is 'cosy crime' for today's sensibilities because there is that slightly edgy element to it.

If you have no idea what I’m about to do, just watch and wait..then you’ll see time spin to a stop right before your eyes..and you’ll forget that world you once knew

Finishing my thoughts aloud meant saying how my dad had passed, and I had failed. How I had smoked joints and lay in bed enabling my hopelessness. I’d been the ugly in my world.

No matter how many romantic poems you recite, no matter how many glorious tales of love you read, how can you really understand the condition if you've never found yourself in it?

Again Gabe looked back at Michael, hoping he was about to step in, but all he did was give him a nod. A nod? Really? I don't need a nod. I need someone to stop this! Gabe thought.

There are some things in this world that can be done over, and some that can't. And time passing is one thing that can't be undone. Come this far, and you can't go back.

The problem lies not with genre but with formula, which consists of seeing genre conventions as restrictions rather than mere guidelines, ends in themselves rather than possibilities.