“Can you be happy with the movies, and the ads, and the clothes in the stores, and the doctors, and the eyes as you walk down the street all telling you there is something wrong with you? No. You ca...”

“Sometimes when I felt the eyes crawling on me from all sides, I got scared thinking someone was looking who wasnt just curious. I knew it was my imagination and I got used to it, learned to shunt i...”

“The truth is always an insult or a joke, lies are generally tastier. We love them. The nature of lies is to please. Truth has no concern for anyone's comfort”

“I think Im getting a notion of how to do this. O.K., a carnival works because people pay to feel amazed and scared. They can nibble around a midway getting amazed here and scared there, or both. An...”

“It is, I suppose, the common grief of children at having to protect their parents from reality. It is bitter for the young to see what awful innocence adults grow into, that terrible vulnerability ...”

“Then he dreamed that he was in the open door of a plane several thousand feet above the earth and he had to jump holding a baby in his arms. It was his baby. He jumped, pulled the rip cord on the p...”

“She had seen it done. Wherever they glittered in the afterlife flying among the high rafters of heaven, swimming with her mother in an undersea cave she hoped the tigers had known it, and roared.”

“But this dagger this was her first. Her favorite. The same one that had sliced off the boys toe on the beach and sent it rolling through the sand.”

“When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets," Papa would say, "she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized ...”

“All lies, freckled vows, crying-weeping on your toesExpected jelly beans gusto, got yourself a life imperfectoToo good a gal, too arrogant a galToo independent, too in need of ChanelTook a careless...”

“And believe me, a good piece of chicken can make anybody believe in the existence of God.”

“Breakfast isn't breakfast without breakfast.”

“work at our responsibility as parents as if everything in life counted on it, because in fact everything in life does count on it.”

“Happiness [is] only real when shared”

“That's what people do who love you. They put their arms around you and love you when you're not so lovable.”