We were awash in tiny attentions. Small gestures, words, empathies thought to be extinct came to life... We discovered the color of each other's eyes.

You haven't lived until you've basked in the adoration of people.

I love surprises! That's what is great about reading. When you open a book, you never know what you'll find.

If I get a new idea today—or any day—I won't run from it. I won't trash it. If it's something I really want to do—I'll do it.

The desert seems to be a brown wasteland of dry, prickly scrub whose only purpose is to serve as a setting for the majestic saguaros. Then, little by little, the plants of the desert begin to identify themselves: the porcupiny yucca, the beaver tail and prickly pear and barrel cacti, buckhorn and staghorn and devil's fingers, the tall, sky-reaching tendrils of the ocotillo.

Amanda took the torn page from Maniac. To her, it was the broken wing of a bird, a pet out in the rain.

A baseball bat could not have hit me harder than that smile did. I was sixteen years old. In that time, how many thousands of smiles had been aimed at me? so why did this one feel like the first?