“...what thrills me about trains is not their size or their equipment but the fact that they are moving, that they embody a connection between unseen places.”

“The connection between art and Christ is like the connection between sunlight and the sun. It is, in fact, the connection between Sonlight and the Son.”

“Things are no longer what they seem to be. My telephones are haunted, and animals whisper at me from unseen places.”

“I have managed not to finish certain books. With barely a twinge of conscience, I hurl down what bores me or doesn't give what I crave: ecstasy, transcendence, a thrill of mysterious connection. For, more than anything else, readers are thrill-seekers, though I don't read thrillers, not the kind sold under that label, anyway. They don't thrill; only language thrills.”

“Between the time the last train leaves and the first train arrives, the place changes: it's not the same as in daytime.”

“Holden Caulfield is the embodiment of what we mean by the phrase “young adult” – too young to be a grown-up, but too wise to the world to be completely innocent. He’s caught in the in-between, and that in-between is what all young adult authors write about.”