Quotes from Bentley Little

I'm just funnin' with you." The slang term sounded sarcastic and condescending coming from his mouth, particularly with the intentionally dropped g.

Claire shook her head as she read the e-mails. She had learned to read and write before the advent of the online age and still felt out of place in the e e cummings world of the Internet, where nothing was capitalized, periods were known as dots, and the normal rules of grammar and punctuation did not apply.

his father's punishments were driven by disappointment, partly in the boy, mostly in himself.

It is the journalist's responsibility to be objective. When you start printing only one side of a story, when you start limiting people's access to facts, telling them by your presentation and emphasis what to believe, what is truth, then you are not doing your job.

After the first draft, I sat back and thought to myself, "where did that come from?" That thought was quickly followed by "what is wrong with you?

I'm just saying—" "You're talking about Black Friday." He nodded. "They're supposed to be our friends," Aviva said. "But are they? Really?

The cool breeze that ruffled her hair felt like something more than wind. 

didn't come up with it. It's a Swedish system." "But they can't…" "Can't what?" "I mean, in Sweden. They don't kill people to make boards." "Of course they do. Why do you think those Scandinavian countries are so clean?

We believe that the dead have power," May translated. The old man gestured toward the corner of his room, where framed black and white photos of an Asian man and woman stood between two sticks of incense in front of a red backdrop decorated with gold lettering.

Mail, by its very nature, was neither all good nor all bad. It carried indifferently messages both positive and negative, filtering nothing, making no distinctions.

It was not that he was ashamed of his job or anything, it was just that . . . well, he was ashamed of his job.

He seemed born to find flaws in everything, a task at which he excelled and in which he seemed to delight.

One piece had been titled "Expectant Silence" and consisted of a man sitting at the piano, playing nothing.

He could wait, because hatred is patient.

his shoulders slumped as though he were a human-shaped balloon that had just lost half of its air.

That's 217," she said curtly.

People talking on handless devices always remind me of mental patients talking to themselves.

Samantha. Juniper, Arizona.

History wasn't a straight line, it was a circle.

It was the same strange capering jig he'd performed Thursday night, and once again it was for the benefit of her and her alone.

That was one thing he'd learned the past two weeks: how much he was affected by the mail, how much the mail intruded on all aspects of his life.

she passed by the edge of the crowd, keeping a wide berth around a red-faced older woman who was shaking her fist in the air and shouting, "I want my country back!" When did people get so angry? Claire wondered.

On the Today show, there was a story about a new poll that had been conducted regarding religious beliefs. A majority of Americans reported that they believed in angels, and a significant number thought they were personally protected by a guardian angel.  He changed the channel to CNN, where they were covering a shooting at a North Carolina high school, a subject more comfortingly normal. 

in the background, behind everything he did or said or thought, like a low hum, was an unyielding sadness, an emotional blackness that threatened to bloom into depression should he pause to examine it.