“Somebody cracks a joke, a whole row laughs, one witticism sets off another, and, like matches, they flare up and burn down.”

“Sometimes we set off down a road thinkin' we're goin' one place and we end up another. But that's okay. The important thing is to start.”

“MarkBaynard: I figured out in the first grade that it was better to crack a joke than somebody's skull.”

“She laughed now, and the sound of it--clear as a bell, dirty as a rugby match--turned heads all along their row.”

“Sex: the match that sets off human firework.”

“I be dog if hit don't look like sometimes that when a fellow sets out to play a joke, hit ain't another fellow he's playing that joke on; hit's a kind of big power laying still somewhere in the dark that he sets out to prank with without knowing hit, and hit all depends on whether that ere power is in the notion to take a joke or not, whether or not hit blows up right in his face, like this one did in mine. ("A Bear Hunt")”