feeling - probably for the first time in my life - the fear and excitement of living in a place where you never know what's going to happen or when.

It's fine," I repeated. And whatever. It was fine. It had to be.

I have an Augustus Waters fetish.

That's why those tapes we made are going to be so great one day, because they'll tell stories that time has swallowed up or distorted or whatever.

When we read the right book generously, it can change the way think about the world around us.

There's a stark difference between the words 'prodigy' and 'genius.' Prodigies can very quickly learn what other people have already figured out; geniuses discover that which no one has ever previously discovered. Prodigies learn; geniuses do.

'Do you know,' he asked in a delicious accent, 'what Dom Pérignon said after inventing champagne?' 'No?' I said. 'He called out to his fellow monks, 'Come quickly: I am tasting the stars!'