“I was often very, incredibly naughty, and if I didn't come home at tea time I used to be sent to bed without any dinner. But people used to bring me things: I was better fed in bed.”

“Eddie discovered one of his childhood's great truths. Grownups are the real monsters, he thought.”

“You laugh because what's fearful and unknown is also what's funny, you laugh the way a small child will sometimes laugh and cry at the same time when a capering circus clown approaches, knowing it ...”

“The most important things are the hardest things to say, because words diminish them...”

“The misery in war-torn Afghanistan is reminiscent of images from the Thirty Years' War.”

“When I was five years old, I auditioned for the role of 'Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol.'”

“Yeah, I spent my teen years in West Virginia, and when I was a kid, in Louisiana. I definitely have that exposure to two different sorts of rural: the South and Appalachia.”

“The time to hesitate is through.”

“A little credulity helps one on through life very smoothly.”