The war had begun and nobody saw it. The storm was lowering and nobody knew it.

I decided that I would do my best in the future not to write books just for money. If you didn't get the money then you didn't have anything. If I did the work I was proud of and I didn't get the money, at least I'd have the work.

Can you believe it? Fifty miles from McDonald's. I didn't think there was anywhere in the world that was fifty miles from McDonald's.

There was a table laid with jellies and trifles, with a party hat beside each place, and a birthday cake with seven candles on it in the center of the table. The cake had a book drawn on it, in icing. My mother, who had organized the party, told me that the lady at the bakery said that they had never put a book on a birthday cake before, and that mostly for boys it was footballs or spaceships. I was their first book.

Because there are mysteries. Because there are things that people are forbidden to speak about. Because there are things they do not remember.

And he waited. It was only for a few seconds, but it felt like a small forever.

Delirium: 'What's the name of the word for the precise moment when you realize that you've actually forgotten how it felt to make love to somebody you really liked a long time ago?' Dream: 'There isn't one.' Delirium: 'Oh. I thought maybe there was.'