“You can get so confusedthat you'll start in to racedown long wiggled roads at a break-necking paceand grind on for miles across weirdish wild space,headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.The Waiting Place...”

“You're off to Great Places!Today is your day!Your mountain is waiting,So... get on your way!”

“Oh, the places you'll go! There is fun to be done!There are points to be scored. There are games to be won.And the magical things you can do with that ballwill make you the winning-est winner of all.Fame! You'll be as famous as famous can be,with the whole wide world watching you win on TV.Except when they don'tBecause, sometimes they won't.I'm afraid that some timesyou'll play lonely games too.Games you can't win'cause you'll play against you.”

“Oh the places you'll go! There is fun to be done! There are points to be scored. There are games to be won. And the magical things you can do with that ball will make you the winning-est winner of all.”

“And will you succeed?Yes! You will, indeed!(98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed.)KID, YOU'LL MOVE MOUNTAINS!So...be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Brayor Mordecai Ali Van Allen O'Shea,you're off to Great Places!Today is your day!Your mountain is waiting.So...get on your way!”

“You will come to a place where the streets are not marked.Some windows are lighted. but mostly they're darked. But mostly they're darked. A place you could sprain both your elbow and chin! Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in?How much can you lose? How much can you win?”

“If you want to catch beasts you don't see every day,You have to go places quite out of the way,You have to go places no others can get to.You have to get cold and you have too get wet, too.”