I'm not afraid to compete. It's just the opposite. Don't you see that? I'm afraid I will compete - that's what scares me.

If there is an amateur reader still left in the world - or anybody who just reads and runs - I ask him or her, with untellable affection and gratitude, to split the dedication of this book four ways with my wife and children.

He had a theory, Walt did, that the religious life, and all the agony that goes with it, is just something God sics on people who have the gall to accuse Him of having created an ugly world.

Girls. You never know what they're going to think.

I thought the two ugly ones were sisters, but they got very insulted when I asked them. You could tell neither one of them wanted to look like the other one, and you couldn't blame them, but it was very amusing anyway.

People never notice anything.

But I was afraid of the questions (much more than the accusations) you might both put to me.