She was a beefy young woman and, whatever piece of music she was playing, it was definitely losing.

Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.

A hardback's harder at Christmas time because that's a good hardback buying time.

People don't alter history any more than birds alter the sky, they just make brief patterns in it.

Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.

Funny, reely," he said. "You spend your whole life goin' to school and learnin' stuff, and they never tell you about stuff like the Bermuda Triangle and UFOs and all these Old Masters running around the inside of the Earth. Why do we have to learn boring stuff when there's all this brilliant stuff we could be learnin', that's what I want to know.

He stared at his feet. “I’m still very ignorant,” he said, “but at least I’m ignorant about really important things.