What we want most is to be held...and told..that everything (everything is a funny thing, is baby milk and papa's eyes, is roaring logs on a cold morning, is hoot owls and the boy who makes you cry after school, is mama's long hair, is being afraid and twisted faces on the bedroom wall)...is going to be alright.

The problem with living outside the law is that you no longer have its protection.

But it's Sunday, Mr. Bell. Clocks are slow on Sundays.

I've got something inside of me, peasantlike and stubborn, and I'm in it till the end of the race.

Randolph," he said, "were you ever as young as me?" And Randolph said: "I was never so old.

How do I look so young? Quite simple: a complete vegetable diet, 12 hours sleep a night, and lots and lots of make-up.

all his prayers of the past had been simple concrete requests: God, give me a bicycle, a knife with seven blades, a box of oil paints. Only how, how, could you say something so indefinite, so meaningless as this: God, let me be loved.