Never, under any circumstances, let the Virginian wolfsnake near a typewriter.
Literature doesn’t exactly have a strong mental-health track record.
It looked like something the Hemlock needed, or a piece of equipment a plumber had left behind. It looked like none of your business.
The children of this world and the adults of this world are in entirely separate boats and only drift near each other when we need a ride from someone or when someone needs us to wash our hands.
Every time you enter a library you might say to yourself, “The world is quiet here,” as a sort of pledge proclaiming reading to be the greater good.
A mystery is solved with a story.
The library was one enormous room, with long, high metal shelves and the perfect quiet that libraries provide for anyone looking for an answer.
There’s an easy method for finding someone when you hear them scream. First get a clean sheet of paper and a sharp pencil. Then sketch out nine rows of fourteen squares each. Then throw the piece of paper away and find whoever is screaming so you can help them. It is no time to fiddle with paper.
They say in every library there is a single book that can answer the question that burns like a fire in the mind.
Keep anyone with whom you can read in silence.
It is always terrible to be told to go play with people one doesn’t know...
You can invent things like automatic popcorn poppers. You can invent things like steam-powered window washers. But you can’t invent more time.
What happens in a certain place can stain your feelings for that location, just as ink can stain a white sheet.
I think we’ll always miss our parents. But I think we can miss them without being miserable all the time. After all, they wouldn’t want us to be miserable.
So you’re reluctant, I said to myself. Many, many people are reluctant. It’s like having feet. It’s nothing to brag about.
The worst surroundings in the world can be tolerated if the people in them are interesting and kind.
Every new promise was like something heavy I had to carry, with no place to put anything down.
In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle.
Complimenting someone in an exaggerated way is known as flattery, and flattery will generally get you anything you want...
Appearance matters a great deal because you can often tell a lot about people by looking at how they present themselves.