You cannot be afraid, Read the book. Smile at it. It's a great book-the greatest book you've ever read.

It was a style not of perfection, but warmth. Even mistakes had a good feeling about them

I only know that all of those people would have sensed me that night, excluding the youngest of the children. I was the suggestion. I was the advice, my imagined feet walking into the kitchen and down the corridor.

Mystery bores me. It chores me. I know what happens and so do you. It's the machinations that wheel us there that aggravate, perplex, interest, and astound me.

And I stop listening to me, because to put it bluntly, I tire me.

A small but noteworthy note. I've seen so many young men over the years who think they're running at other young men. They are not. They are running at me.

In the basement of 33 Himmel Street, Max Vandenburg could feel the fists of an entire nation. One by one they climbed into the ring to beat him down. They made him bleed. They let him suffer. Millions of them - until one last time, when he gathered himself to his feet.