“The book was turned to the page with Anne Frank's name, but what got me about it was the fact that right beneath her name there were four Aron Franks. FOUR. Four Aron Franks without museums, without historical markers, without anyone to mourn them. I silently resolved to remember and pray for the four Aron Franks as long as I was around.”

“Augustus Waters," I said, looking up at him, thinking that you cannot kiss anyone in the Anne Frank House, and then thinking that Anne Frank, after all, kissed someone in the Anne Frank House, and that she would probably like nothing more than for her home to have become a place where the young and irreparably broken sink into love.”

“I walked to Montevallo.''Forty miles?!''Forty-two,' he corrected me. 'Well. Forty-two there. Forty-two back. Eight-two miles. No. Eight-four. Yes. Eighty-four miles in forty-five hours.''What the hell's in Montevallo?' I asked.'Not much. I just walked til I got too cold, and then I turned around.''You didn't sleep?''No, the dreams are terrible.”

“The kiss lasted forever as Otto Frank kept talking from behind me. "And my conclusion is," he said, "since I had been in very good terms with Anne, that most parents don't know really their children.”

“Al Hickey: It's not about anything. Frank Boggs: Yeah, it's about four hundred grand”

“But to be perfectly frank, this childish idea that the author of a novel has some special insight into the characters in the novel...it's ridiculous. That novel was composed of scratches on a page, dear. The characters inhabiting it have no life outside of those scratches. What happened to them? They all ceased to exist the moment the novel ended.”

“In retrospect Hank I don't know why I spent four years writing this book when I could have just made a hit sing-a-ma-jig album.”