Every small town that I had ever been to had had a caboose.

A faint smell of lilac filled the air. There was always lilac in this part of town. Where there were grandmothers, there was always lilac.

A great novelist excels on the small scale and the large, the individual leaf and root as well as the forest; good fiction convinces us that the imaginary is real by selecting exactly the right detail and rendering it perfectly.

The city has to do what any citizen or family does, when you have a dream. You tighten your belt. You sacrifice some luxuries. Above all, you don't waste a dime.

The relationship between book and reader is intimate, at best a kind of love affair, and first loves are famously tenacious. [...] First love is a momentous step in our emotional education, and in many ways, it shapes us forever.

We spend so much of our passion on our first love. I'm not convinced that it-passion-is one of those things that you have an endless amount of-like happiness or sadness. I could be happy all day. I could be sad all day. But I'm not so sure I'll ever love like that again.

In many ways, our campaign this year will be the same as last time: We're still going to focus on fixing up basics and cleaning up ethics at City Hall.