"Life-affirming people are a bit creepy and self-consciously life-affirming art is usually awful. My books tend to have happy endings, or at least that’s one way of reading them. My characters are exuberant and funny as well as dark. Duality is the essence of my voice so it’s appropriate for me to have an evil twin to blame things on."

"There will always be people like me, who believe that to ripple the pages of a printed book is a special experience, one that through the centuries has taken millions from the darkness into the light."

"For every hero, there has to be a fall guy, and the greater the triumph on one hand, the greater the humiliation on the other."

"Your life informs your writing."

"That’s where faith comes in. You trust that Someone bigger than you can handle it, and you learn that it’s okay to accept help every now and then instead of always giving it."

"“Tearing out the old, icky stuff is hard, it’s messy—ouch!” He dropped the hammer from his right hand and shook his left. “Ouch!” He danced around for a minute before regaining his composure, picking up the hammer and nail again, then looked at her straight-faced. “And at times it’s downright painful. But you’ve got to be willing to go through the process if you really want to see a true change. Anything less is just a cover-up.”"

""I think it’s time I started believing in something.”"

"“Perhaps Keith is exactly the way God intended him to be.”"

"“I’ve seen things like this before,” the woman medic said. “Awed whispers, peaceful expressions when there shouldn’t be one, and almost always a song. Once I even thought I heard the tune. Makes you wonder what’s out there.”"

"Keith seems to be able to see and hear angels from time to time."

"“I’m sure that if he really does see angels, they are sent to him for a specific purpose that is beyond our understanding. And if someone else—say, you, for example—were to see or hear angels, it might be for an altogether different purpose.”"

"“The lamp’s not shining.” He pointed at the glow on the wall. “That’s the angel. He’s blinking the lamp.”"

"“…to know Keith is to love him. A lot of people seem to be especially disturbed by him, although I’ve never understood why. Does he make you uncomfortable?” There was no hint of judgment in her question, just curiosity."

"“‘Don’t forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it.’ It’s from the Bible. Maybe your friend’s an angel too. I hope you were nice to him.”"

"I hardly think an angel would walk around like a homeless person in the middle of New York."

"“That’s why God sends His angels to me and you, maybe. So we won’t be sad anymore.”"

"If only everyone could see, they would realize that the one they thought weak, was actually the strongest one among them."

"Let not thy peace depend on the tongues of men; for whether they judge well of thee or ill, thou art not on that account other than thyself. Where are true peace and true glory? Are they not in God?"

"For honesty is before honor; and though man must write his poems in sounding words, God's poems are printed best in the brave and silent duties of common life."

"Lockhart's Life of Walter Scott may be said to be the most admirable biography in the English language, after Boswell's Samuel Johnson."

"It is an old belief That on some solemn shore Beyond the sphere of grief Dear friends shall meet once more."

"We thought it impossible any publication could raise Sir Walter Scott's talents or character in public opinion or in our private opinion more especially. And yet you certainly have raised high as ever biographer raised his hero — And you have done it without one word of puff or exaggeration or even full-faced eulogy. Sir Walter Scott himself would say — “Well done — my good son.”"

"It is a better and a wiser thing to be a starved apothecary than a starved poet; so back to the shop Mr. John, back to "plasters, pills, and ointment boxes," &c. But, for Heaven's sake, young Sangrado, be a little more sparing of extenuatives and soporifics in your practice than you have been in your poetry."

"Here lies the peerless paper lord, Lord Peter, Who broke the laws of God and man, and metre."

"A male Horace Walpole."

"Barring drink and the girls, I ne'er heard of a sin – Many worse, better few, than bright, broken Maginn."

"A singular relation...grew up between Carlyle and Lockhart. They lived in different circles; they did not meet often, or correspond often; but Carlyle ever after spoke of Lockhart as he seldom spoke of any man; and such letters of Lockhart's to Carlyle as survive show a trusting confidence extremely remarkable in a man who was so chary of his esteem."

"It is strange that no one seems to think it at all necessary to say a single word about another new school of poetry which has of late sprung up among us. This school has not, I believe, as yet received any name; but if I may be permitted to have the honour of christening it, it may henceforth be referred to by the designation of The Cockney School."

"The first major Scottish novelist since Walter Scott."

"This slip has been inserted by mistake."

"Gray is in my estimation a great writer, perhaps the greatest living in this archipelago today."

"I asked the headmaster of literature, "Why are there so many headmasters and so few poets? Is it easier for you to train your own kind than ours?" He said, "No. The emperor needs all the headmasters he can get. If a quarter of his people were headmasters he would be perfectly happy. But more than two poets would tear his kingdom apart.""

"Work as if you were in the early days of a better nation."

"A good poem is a tautology. It expands one word by adding a number which clarify it, thus making a new word which has never before been spoken. The seed-word is always so ordinary that hardly anyone perceives it. Classical odes grow from and or because, romantic lyrics from but or if. Immature verses expand a personal pronoun ad nauseam, the greatest works bring glory to a common verb."

"To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul. To Miss Mackay it is a putting in of something that is not there, and that is not what I call education, I call it intrusion."

"One's prime is elusive. You little girls, when you grow up, must be on the alert to recognise your prime at whatever time of your life it may occur. You must then live it to the full."

"It is impossible to persuade a man who does not disagree, but smiles."

"New York, home of the vivisectors of the mind, and of the mentally vivisected still to be reassembled, of those who live intact, habitually wondering about their states of sanity, and home of those whose minds have been dead, bearing the scars of resurrection."

"It is impossible to repent of love. The sin of love does not exist."

"I am putting old heads on your young shoulders," Miss Brodie had told them at that time, "and all my pupils are the crème de la crème."

"Her sentences march under a harsh sun that bleaches color from them but bestows a peculiar, invigorating, Pascalian clarity."

"The one certain way for a woman to hold a man is to leave him for religion."

"Parents learn a lot from their children about coping with life."

"She writes well and concisely, and this has tended to obscure the psychological superficiality and sheer petty malice of her content."

"A life like mine annoys most people; they go to their jobs every day, attend to things, give orders, pummel typewriters, and get two or three weeks off every year, and it vexes them to see someone else not bothering to do these things and yet getting away with it, not starving, being lucky as they call it."

"Publishers are humane men, and rarely commit crimes. Authors, however, are a hardened set, who usually perpertrate a felony every time they issue a book."

"Of all evil-doers, the American is most to be feared. He uses more ingenuity in the planning of his projects and will take greater risks in carrying them out than any other malefactor on earth."

"The present moment is ever the critical time. The future is merely for intelligent forethought."

"Galt was the first writer to show the effects of the burgeoning industrial revolution, making him the first political novelist in the English language, and though his reputation has been overshadowed by Scott and Hogg, he is now recognised as one of the great writers of the age."