3
" There are a lot of ways for a novelist to create suspense, but also really only two: one a trick, one an art.
The trick is to keep a secret. Or many secrets, even. In Lee Child’s books, Jack Reacher always has a big mystery to crack, but there are a series of smaller mysteries in the meantime, too, a new one appearing as soon as the last is resolved. J. K. Rowling is another master of this technique — Who gave Harry that Firebolt? How is Rita Skeeter getting her info?
The art, meanwhile, the thing that makes “Pride and Prejudice” so superbly suspenseful, more suspenseful than the slickest spy novel, is to write stories in which characters must make decisions. “Breaking Bad” kept a few secrets from its audience, but for the most part it was fantastically adept at forcing Walter and Jesse into choice, into action. The same is true of “Freedom,” or “My Brilliant Friend,” or “Anna Karenina,” all novels that are hard to stop reading even when it seems as if it should be easy. "
― Charles Finch
6
" Pye turned his paw over and chewed his claws. “Humph. What you think of me is none of my business.”
“You don’t know, do you?”
“Know more than you . . . Know what?”
“You are dead.”
Pye patted his paws. “No, I’m not.” He rolled on his back and stretched, enjoying the warmth of the fire.
“I’ve been here since 1665.”
Pye chuckled. “You are, if I may so, in remarkably good condition.” Apart from the hole in your head, missing tail, and pulmonic plague cough.
“I’ve seen them come. Seen them go. Seem them hang around in limbo. That’s what it’s called when beings don’t leave this Earth.”
“Purgatory!”
“I am responsible for many deaths,” Rita said.
“You!?”
“They couldn’t build the graves fast enough to bury the bodies.”
“I don’t understand how a mere stump-tailed fur ball could endanger life.”
“If I were you I'd think that.” A silence followed before Rita said, “I did not work alone.”
“Oh? "
― , Heaven Won't Wait
8
" I have these secret pangs of shame about being single, like I wasn't good enough to get a husband. Rita reminded me of something I'd told her once, about the five rules of the world as arrived at by this Catholic priest named Tom Weston. The first rule, he says, is that you must not have anything wrong with you or anything different. The second one is that if you do have something wrong with you, you must get over it as soon as possible. The third rule is that if you can't get over it, you must pretend that you have. The fourth rule is that if you can't even pretend that you have, you shouldn't show up. You should stay home, because it's hard for everyone else to have you around. And the fifth rule is that if you are going to insist on showing up, you should at least have the decency to feel ashamed.
So Rita and I decided that the most subversive, revolutionary thing I could do was to show up for my life and not be ashamed. "
― Anne Lamott , Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year