"Richard began to understand darkness: darkness as something solid and real, so much more than a simple absence of light. He felt it touch his skin, questing, moving, exploring: gliding through his mind. It slipped into his lungs, behind his eyes, into his mouth..."

"I expect you to vanishup and up into the tree,a shake of the branchesand gone like youhad never happened.But you came down and handed me a leaf'from seven limbs up,already yellow,' you said,and then you walked awayand you were still real."

"Most kids don't give a hoot in hell for brains; they go a penny a pound, and the kid with the high I.Q. Who can't play baseball or at least come in third in the local circle jerk is everybody's fifth wheel."

"There was a silence. Elliot was surprised, because he would have thought the sound of every atom in his body exploding with indignation might make some noise."

"Within weeks of my arrival in New York, I was someone else, not because there had been a revolution in my psychological makeup or any trauma. It was simply this: people saw me in a light in which I had never been seen before."