He had never felt anything like that before - yet somehow he knew that from now on he would always feel like that, always, and something caught at his throat as he realized what a strange sad adventure life might get to be, strange and sad and still much more beautiful and amazing than he could ever have imagined because it was so really, strangely sad.

I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost.

I see as much as doors'll allow, open or shut.

I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future.

I petted the dogs who didn't argue with me ever. All dogs love God. They're wiser than their masters.

I ate apple pie and ice cream—it was getting better as I got deeper into Iowa, the pie bigger, the ice cream richer. There were the most beautiful bevies of girls everywhere I looked in Des Moines that afternoon—they were coming home from high school—but I had no time for thoughts like that…So I rushed past the pretty girls, and the prettiest girls in the world live in Des Moines.

It all ends in tears anyway.