When a child first catches adults out -- when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not always have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just -- his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child's world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing.

And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.

Kino heard the little splash of morning waves on the beach. It was very good -- Kino closed his eyes again to listen to his music.

A town is a thing like a colonial animal. A town has a nervous system and a head and shoulders and feet. A town is a thing separate from all other towns alike. And a town has a whole emotion. How news travels through a town is a mystery not easily to be solved. News seems to move faster than small boys can scramble and dart to tell it, faster than women can call it over the fences.

Perhaps the best conversationalist in the world is the man who helps others to talk.

It is the nature of a man as he grows older, a small bridge intime, toprotest againstchange, particularlychangefor the better.

I have lost all sense of home, having moved about so much. It means to me now--only that place where the books are kept.