“He likes to know things. He checks out book and record collections when he visits people, looks in medicine cabinets, takes inventory in refrigerators. He eaves drops on conversations at public phone booths. He reads murder victims' mail.”

“The only difference between dancing and fucking," he said in those days, "is that you don't fuck in front of a live band.”

“It's a mixed crowd at the dogs - black, white, hispanic - but to Walt they all look like Jackie Gleason. Heavyset guys with big plans and polyester souls.”

“That is the definition of faith, hermano," says Figueroa. "Something that we believe in even though it doesn't work."Eres un cinicio."If it worked, it would be science.”

“There is great literature about imprisonment, . . . about the foot soldier, . . . about the sea -- but not one great work about flying.”

“He did not know, and perhaps this doctor did. And he could not take the chance of pitting his certain ignorance against this man's possible knowledge. He was trapped as his people were always trapped, and would be until, as he had said, they could be sure that the things in the books ere really in the books.”

“Colin emphatically pushed the book cover shut when he finished reading. "Did you like it?" His dad asked."Yup," Colin said. He liked all books, because he liked the mere act of reading, the magic of turning scratches on a page into words inside his head.”