Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment.

One of the easiest things in the world is not to write... If it were easy, everyone would do it.

I have stayed these years in my hovel because of you. I have taught myself languages because of you. I have made my body strong because I thought you might be pleased by a strong body. I have lived my life with only the prayer that some sudden dawn you might glance in my direction. I have not known a moment in years when the sight of you did not send my heart careening against my rib cage. I have not known a night when your visage did not accompany me to sleep. There has not been a morning when you did not flutter behind my waking eyelids.

I must be overtired', Buttercup managed. 'The excitement and all.' 'Rest then', her mother cautioned. 'Terrible things can happen when you're overtired. I was overtired the night your father proposed.

But when a girl gives a boy a dead squid - that had to mean something.

One of the things that happens to careers out here is that people destroy themselves because they begin to think they're wonderful. They begin to think they know what they're doing, and the minute that happens, it's over.

Buttercup's mother whirled on him. 'Did you forget to pay your taxes?' (This was after taxes. But everything is after taxes. Taxes were here even before stew.)