“I've had quite enough danger for a while I think. I might have some more when I'm thirteen, but definitely not before then...”

“...we've already had one horrible thing happen today, which means that if you think about it the odds of anything else horrible happening again in the next few hours should now be quite low.”

“I haven't been so sure of anything since the time Mum asked me if I absolutely, definitely, certainly thought it was a good idea to practise doing cartwheels inside the house.”

“...food was at least three million per cent more delicious when you ate it immediately after thinking you were going to die.”

“We're going to have ourselves one hell of a Ruckus," said Smokey with a grin that went quite beyond the boundaries of mischief and right into the realm of delinquency.”

“I had an aunt named 'abnormal Shauna' once. But she passed away in an unfortunate cliff-top interpretative dance and fireworks accident.”

“I think that there have been displays of an impoverished reading of the book. I get the distinct feeling at times that certain critics have not risen above a 10th grade level of reading and that they approached the book with expectations of preconceived notions that then drive a very boneheaded reading. In other words they don't allow the book's rules to establish themselves before applying their own aesthetic criteria to it which I think is a mistake. I think a careful and adult reader allows the book to establish its world and then evaluates it on how well it does so. I also think a smart critic does not drag behind him or her like a dead horse whatever presuppositions the first book might have indicated where the second book might be about or what kind of freedom the writer might be exploring as a writer. All of those things I find unfortunate when I read a review that seems misbegotten. But I'm not sure that this is not a new phenomenon and it would be a Sisyphean task to argue against a misreading because those misreadings are an inherent part of the critical apparatus.”