“Night camp wasn't much better. The air was thick with hostility,sideways glances, and accusing stares.”

“His thin accusation hung thick in the air like fog smoking a cigarette.”

“Walk the Bowery under the El at night and all you feel is a sort of cold guilt. Touched for a dime, you try to drop the coin and not touch the hand, because the hand is dirty; you try to avoid the glance, because the glance accuses. This is not so much personal menace as universal — the cold menace of unresolved human suffering and poverty and the advanced stages of the disease alcoholism.”

“Night wasn't so much falling as sharpening its claws.”

“As more kids piled on and the bus started up, she stared out the window at the place where she'd done so much growing up. When she'd first come to camp, she couldn't believe she was setting foot on Camp Lakeview, or any camp grounds at all, for that matter. Now she couldn't believe she was leaving.”

“Loneliness adds beauty to life. It puts a special burn on sunsets and makes night air smell better.”