At the bottom of philosophy something very true and very desperate whispers: Everyone is hungry all the time. Everyone is starving. Everyone wants so much, much more than they can stomach, but the appetite doesn't converse much with the stomach. Everyone is hungry and not only for food - for comfort and love and excitement and the opposite of being alone. Almost everything awful anyone does is to get those things and keep them.

Magic does that. It wastes you away. Once it grips you by the ear, the real world gets quieter and quieter, until you can hardly hear it at all.

He tried to reconstruct the story in his mind, but it kept getting confused, bleeding into itself like watercolors.

Hats have power. Hats can change you into someone else.

We like the wrong sorts of girls, they wrote. They are usually the ones worth writing about.

Respect me. Be proud, and if you love me, a little afraid, because love so often looks like fear. We are alike. We are alike.

All jobs are odd, or they would be games or naps or picnics.