“Best of all are the decorations the grandchildren have made ~ fat little stars and rather crooked Santas, shaped out of dough and baked in the oven.”

“Tapping a little bell, I leaned on the desk and turned to look at a small, traditionally decorated Christmas tree on a table near the entranceway. It was complete with shiny, egg-fragile bulbs; miniature candy canes; flat, laughing Santas with arms wide; a star on top nodding awkwardly against the delicate shoulder of an upper branch; and colored lights that bloomed out of flower-shaped sockets. For some reason this seemed to me a sorry little piece.”

“It was as though the darkness was a sheet of raw cookie dough and someone had just taken a cookie cutter and made a child-sized shape out of it.”

“Without missing a beat he said, “This year, Santa, I’d like a pony and an Easy-Bake Oven.”Raja grunted and pushed him off to the side. “You’ll be getting coal in a place where it hurts if you ever attempt to sit in my lap again.”

“A half-baked idea is okay as long as it's in the oven.”

“Imagination is not an icing on the cake of life but the oven in which it is baked.”