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A man’s life was five dogs long, Cortland believed. The first was the one that taught you. The second was the one you taught. The third and fourth were the ones you worked. The last was the one that outlived you. That was the winter dog. Cortland’s winter dog had no name. He thought of it only as the scarecrow dog…

Most people are optimists, although they may claim they are not. People who call themselves realists are often the biggest optimists of all.

The Tower trembles; the worlds shudder in their courses. The rose feels a chill, as of winter.

Kindle, isn’t it?” the waitress asked. “I got one for Christmas, and I love it. I’m reading my way through all of Jodi Picoult’s books.” “Oh, probably not all of them,” Wesley said. “Huh? Why not?” “She’s probably got another one done already. That’s all I meant.” “And James Patterson’s probably written one since he got up this morning!” she said, and went off chortling.

He thought one of the universal truths of life was that, sooner or later, someone always paid.

Because sometimes longshots came in. Both for good and for ill.

This was a fact so simple that it defied logic. It bypassed logic.

In a real dark night of the soul, Scott Fitzgerald had said, it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.

A crazy certainty had arisen in his mind: a hand - or perhaps a claw - was going to swim up from the grayness of the Kindle's screen, grab him by the throat, and yank him in.

It occurred to him that spite was a kind of methadone for lovers. Was it better to go cold turkey? Perhaps not.

George Herbert was wrong. Living well isn’t the best revenge; loving well is.

Books were his Achilles heel. She

Can you keep a secret? Say no and I’ll have to kill you.

The Tower trembles; the worlds shudder in their courses.

He had an idea all such blocks were probably fear-centered and basically hysterical in nature, as if the brain detected (or thought it had detected) some nasty interior beast and had locked it in a cell with a steel door.

they seemed as unreal as actors when you saw them on a movie screen. They were big up there—often beautiful, too—but they were still only shadows thrown by light.

The gadget had come with The New Oxford American Dictionary preloaded. You only had to begin typing your word and the Kindle found it for you. It was, he thought, TiVo for bookworms.

Books have a smell, for instance. One that gets better—more nostalgic—as the years go by. Does this gadget of yours have a smell?” “Nope,