“The idea of going to the movies made Hugo remember something Father had once told him about going to the movies when he was just a boy, when the movies were new. Hugo's father had stepped into a dark room, and on a white screen he had seen a rocket fly right into the eye of the man in the moon. Father said he had never experienced anything like it. It had been like seeing his dreams in the middle of the day.”

“The movie was Son of Frankenstein, and there was a Gene Autry film along with it. I liked the Frankenstein movie. I liked all Frankenstein movies. But as for Gene Autry, I never liked him very much. He had a bad habit of pulling out his guitar and singing, right in the middle of the movie.”

“I liked Lost in Space,” Stefan said.“The movie or the TV series?”“The movie? Right. I had forgotten about the movie,” he said soberly. “It was better that way.”

“They didn't think it had anything to do with the war. They were sure Billy was going to pieces because his father had thrown him into the deep end of the Y.M.C.A. swimming pool when he was a little boy, and had then taken him to the rim of the Grand Canyon.”

“When making his music, he [Elvis Presley] had been the essence of cool, but in his movies he was often a self-parody embarrassing to watch. Colonel Parker, his manager, who had picked movie scrips for him, had served Elvis less well than the monk Rasputin had served Czar Nicholas and Alexandra.”

“I remembered going to confession to a great priest, Father Moriarty of South William Street. I told him, "I shot a man, Father." "Did you think you were doing right? Had you no qualms about it?" he asked me. I told him I didn't have any qualms, I thought I was doing right, and he said, "Carry on with the good work," and gave me absolution.”