Goodness! Golly! Good God! Blessed Allah! Zeus and Hera! Mary and Joseph! Nathaniel Hawthorne! Don't touch her! Grab her! Move closer! Run away! Don't move! Kill the snake! Leave it alone! Give it some food! Don't let it bite her! Lure the snake away! Here, snakey! Here, snakey snakey!

The worst surroundings in the world can be tolerated if the people in them are interesting and kind.

Santa Claus has nothing to do with it," the latke said. "Christmas and Hanukah are completely different things." "But different things can often blend together," said the pine tree. "Let me tell you a funny story about pagan rituals.

I was too jitterbuggy happy to sleep, and the whole day kept playing in my brain's little screening room.

Let’s go, let’s go together toward something extraordinary and I started making plans, thinking we would get that far.

The children of this world and the adults of this world are in entirely separate boats and only drift near each other when we need a ride from someone or when someone needs us to wash our hands.

Various parts of my body told me that in the future they would appreciate it if I slept lying down on a bed instead of sitting at the counter of Black Cat Coffee. I quietly reassured them that this was an unusual situation, and had the machinery make me some bread as a breakfast.