“The horizontal world I had thought I occupied was tilting, dumping me somewhere else, somewhere new.”

“She taught me to revel. She taught me to wonder. She taught me to laugh.My sense of humor had always measured up to everyone else's; but timidintroverted me, I showed it sparingly: I was a smiler. In her presence Ithrew back my head and laughed out loud for the first time in my life”

“You occupied my space. But because you were not in my present, when I looked into my future I saw . . . nothing. Isn't that sad? And stupid?”

“Maniac Magee was not born in a dump.”

“You liked me."I smiled. "You were smitten with me. You were speechless to behold my beauty. You had never met anyone so fascinating. You thought of me every waking minute. You dreamed about me. You couldn't stand it. You couldn't let such wonderfulness out of your sight. You had to follow me."I turned to Cinnamon. He licked my nose. "Don't give yourself so much credit. It was your rat I was after."She laughed, and the desert sang.”

“Of course we did other things too. We walked. We talked. We rode bikes.Though I had my driver's license, I bought a cheap secondhand bicycle soI could ride with her. Sometimes she led the way, sometimes I did. Wheneverwe could, we rode side by side.She was bendable light: she shone around every corner of my day.She taught me to revel. She taught me to wonder. She taught me to laugh.My sense of humor had always measured up to everyone else's; but timidintroverted me, I showed it sparingly: I was a smiler. In her presence Ithrew back my head and laughed out loud for the first time in my life”

“I began to feel again something that I had been only dimly aware of before. It was a small, surprising sense of disappointment even as he was kissing me, but the violins were so loud at the time I could hear nothing else. Now the disappointment was returning and with it the realization that the magic had come only from the moment, not from him. It was different with you. In the eyes and ears of my heart, you and the magic are one and the same. The setting never mattered. On the sidewalk in front of my house, at the enchanted place in the desert, walking the halls at school- where I was with you, I heard violins.”