I'm an old man, and she's gone now. So don't worry, okay?

I think that's why I wanted to write about seventh grade. I'd say seventh grade is a time when kids are really exploring a lot and becoming aware of the world around them in a deeper way. And they just have sort of have a wider appreciation of what's happening around them. They are seeing themselves from the outside more than they had before.

If you took every tear cried by everyone on earth on one single day and put them in a container, how big would that container need to be? Could you fill a water tower? Three water towers? It's one of those unknowable things. There has to be an answer, but we'll never know what it is.

Like when that man was running down Broadway stark naked and we all had to eat in the cafeteria while the police tried to catch him.

I'm an old man, and she's gone now. So don't worry, okay?

I feel like there are stages in many, many people's childhoods when you don't have one good friend. It can happen a lot in sixth and seventh grade because that's when things are changing so quickly. It's like a desperate dash for some kind of acceptable identity, and it can get ugly.

I love a book that makes me ask questions about what I think or how I see the world or how I feel, so I hope that 'Goodbye, Stranger' is that kind of book for some people.