Take What You Want And Pay For

What I Warn You To Remember Is That I Am A Detective. Our Relationship With Truth Is Fundamental But Cracked, Refracting Confusingly Like Fragmented Glass. It Is The Core Of Our Careers, The Endgame Of Every Move We Make, And We Pursue It With Strategies Painstakingly Constructed Of Lies And Concealment And Every Variation On Deception.

If You're Writing A Scene For A Character With Whom You Disagree In Every Way, You Still Need To Show How That Character Is Absolutely Justified In His Or Her Own Mind, Or The Scene Will Come Across As Being About The Author's Views Rather Than About The Character's.

But This Is What I Know About People Getting Ready To Walk Of The Edge Of Their Own Lives: They Want Someone To Know How They Got There. Maybe They Want To Know That When They Dissolve Into Earth And Water, That Last Fragment Will Be Saved, Held In Some Corner Of Someone's Mind; Or Maybe All They Want Is A Chance To Dump It Pulsing And Bloody Into Someone Else's Hands, So It Won't Weigh Them Down On The Journey. They Want To Leave Their Stories Behind. No One In All The World Knows That Better Than I Do.

Sometimes I Think About The Sly, Flickering Line That Separates Being Spared From Being Rejected. Sometimes I Think Of The Ancient Gods Who Demanded That Their Sacrifices Be Fearless And Without Blemish, And I Wonder Whether, Whoever Or Whatever Took Peter And Jamie Away, It Decided I Wasn't Good Enough.

You Forget What It Was Like. You'd Swear On Your Life You Never Will, But Year By Year It Falls Away. How Your Temperature Ran Off The Mercury, Your Heart Galloped Flat-out And Never Needed To Rest, Everything Was Pitched On The Edge Of Shattering Glass. How Wanting Something Was Like Dying Of Thirst. How Your Skin Was Too Fine To Keep Out Any Of The Million Things Flooding By; Every Color Boiled Bright Enough To Scald You, Any Second Of Any Day Could Send You Soaring Or Rip You To Bloody Shreds.