“The world is vicious, too huge to care about even its own survival”

“Our father knew more than any living person about the secret of time, except how to live in it. His time did not travel; it was a block of persisting nows.”

“Feeling for the first time what it meant to kick open doors that kept closing, no matter how many legends had already passed through.”

“Silence: the motor drive of nothingness underneath all rhythm - threatened to last forever, a spell of sleep cast over the entire kingdom of listeners.”

“He stayed inside his perfect silence, hung on the stopped, forward edge of nowhere”

“I know, from the three visits I made to him, the blended composite of love and fear that exists only in a boy's notion of his father.”

“Every November of my boyhood, we put on red poppies and attended highly patriotic services in remembrance of those who had 'given' their lives. But on what assurance did we know that these gifts ha...”

“Boys [should be] inured from childhood to trifling risks and slight dangers of every possible description, such as tumbling into ponds and off of trees, etc., in order to strengthen their nervous s...”

“I was happy, but happy is an adult word. You don't have to ask a child about happy, you see it. They are or they are not. Adults talk about being happy because largely they are not. Talking about i...”

“Dear God," she prayed, "let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry...have too much to eat. Let me be r...”

“I walked over to the hill where we used to go and sled. There were a lot of little kids there. I watched them flying. Doing jumps and having races. And I thought that all those little kids are goin...”