Time continued to pass - the oldest trick in the world, and maybe the only one that really is magic.

The good folks mostly win, courage usually triumphs over fear, the family dog hardly ever contracts rabies: these are things I knew at twenty-five, and things I still know now, at the age of 25 x 2. But I know something else as well: there's a place in most of us where the rain is pretty much constant, the shadows are always long, and the woods are full of monsters. It is good to have a voice in which the terrors of such a place can be articulated and its geography partially described, without denying the sunshine and clarity that fill so much of our ordinary lives. (viii)

They had become a fixed star in the shifting firmament of the high school's relationships, the acknowledged Romeo and Juliet. And she knew with sudden hatefulness that there was one couple like them in every white suburban high school in America.

Jake went in, aware that he had, for the first time in three weeks, opened a door without hoping madly to find another world on the other side. A bell jingled overhead. The mild, spicy smell of old books hit him, and the smell was somehow like coming home.

Outside, a gusty October breeze was combing leaves from the trees and sending them across her backyard in colorful skitters.

I don't want to speak too disparagingly of my generation (actually I do, we had a chance to change the world but opted for the Home Shopping Network Instead).

God doesn't bribe, child. He just makes a sign and lets people take it as they will.