How does a hundred-and-eighty-pound man turn into a ninety-pound wolf? Where does the leftover ninety go? Does he park it in the umbrella stand overnight?

The train is roaring toward you and the villain is twirling his moustache and you're fussing that he's tied you to the tracks with the wrong kind of rope.

I wondered what you'd have on the side with a plate of Deep Fried Anxiety. Pickles? Coleslaw? Potato-strychnine mash?

The Lone Ranger of vampires. Did that make me Tonto?

Charlie is one of the big good guys in my universe.

I'd always had a guilty preference for fiction. Since I seemed now to be living fiction, this proved to have been an entirely reasonable choice.

Can you trust me, he said. Not will you. Can you.Can I trust him?What do I have to lose?

What this world doesn't have is the three-wishes, go-to-the-ball-and-meet-your-prince, happily-ever-after kind of magic. We have all the mangling and malevolent kinds. Who *invented* this system?

You can be a really nasty, selfish little jerk when you're scared enough. I was scared enough.

The most serious drawback to the telling-nothing approach is that it made that much more of a mystery of what had happened, and the nature of gossip abhors a vacuum of the unexplained.

When you're feeding the second coachload of tourists that day you aren't thinking about the birthday party for fifty next week.

You cannot be both religious and unbiased.

I was fine with everything except Maths. I was terrible at Maths.

The budget should be balanced not by more taxes, but by reduction of follies.

I have tried to kill sectarianism, whether in Catholics or Protestants.

In a society of ideological believers, nothing is more ridiculous than the individual who doubts and does not conform.

I was trying to perform as best as possible. I was a boy at the time, but worked well with the sickle.

If God continues to give me health and a sane mind and verbal ability, I want to teach.

Mozart resolved his emotions on a level that transformed them into moods uncontaminated by mortal anguish, enabling him to express the angelic anguish that is so peculiarly his own.

When people come to Jamaica, we don't want them to think about the problems of Jamaica. So let them come be in their paradise.