It's been quite a while since I was really afraid that there was a boogeyman in my closet, although I am still very careful to keep my feet under the covers when I go to sleep, because the covers are magic, and if your feet are covered, it's like boogeyman Kryptonite.

Mister, we deal in lead.

Your job isn't to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.

Now I think all of us were born with a hole in our hearts, and we go around looking for the person who can fill it. You... you fill me up.

Life was such a wheel that no man could stand upon it for long. And it always, at the end, came round to the same place again.

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)

He lay back, put his arm over his eyes, and tried to hold onto the anger, because the anger made him feel brave. A brave man could think. A coward couldn't.