I'm beginning to feel that no author has the right to tear his characters apart if he doesn't know how, or feel that he knows how (poor sucker) to put them together again. I'm tired—my God, so tired—of leaving them all broken on the page with just 'The End' written underneath.

I think that one of these days," he said, "you're going to have to find out where you want to go. And then you've got to start going there. But immediately. You can't afford to lose a minute. Not you.

He seemed unaware of the messiness of the arrangement.

Almost every time somebody gives me a present, it ends up making me sad.

For joy, apparently, it was all Franny could do to hold the phone, even with both hands.

Maybe there's a trapdoor under my chair, and I'll just disappear.

Her joke of a name aside, her general unprettiness aside, she was, in terms of permanently memorable, immoderately perceptive, small-area faces, a stunning and final girl.