After I go out this door, I may only exist in the minds of all my acquaintances…I may be an orange peel.

Give me a story that just makes me unreasonably vigilant. Keep me up till five only because all your stars are out, and for no other reason.

He seemed unaware of the messiness of the arrangement.

But you can't always tell - with somebody's mother, I mean. Mothers are all slightly insane.

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

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.

I was sixteen then, and I'm seventeen now, and sometimes I act like I'm about thirteen. Sometimes, I act a lot older than I am--I really do. But people never notice it. People never notice anything.