“I sighed and wondered if I'd done it- made a friend. I hoped I had even as I wondered if it was a mistake. If nothing else, I supposed, one good thing had come from all this. Now there was a colorful little sprinkle on the vanilla pudding of my life.”

“I realized now that I would never be truly done with adventuring. The path of life takes twists and turns one could never even imagine or hope for. It was the greatest adventure and I had so much more to experience. Where, I wonder, would life lead me next?”

“Even though Mavis was my secret friend, she is the only one I hope I see again. She’s the only one I wonder about. I hope she wonders about me too.”

“But one thing was quite clear...." [Sol Bloom, chief of the Midway] wrote. "[B]eing broke didn't disturb me in the least. I had started with nothing, and if I now found myself with nothing, I was at least even. Actually, I was much better than even: I had had a wonderful time.”

“And this was perhaps the first time in my life that death occurred to me as a reality. I thought of the people before me who had looked down at the river and gone to sleep beneath it. I wondered about them. I wondered how they had done it—it, the physical act. I had thought of suicide when I was much younger, as, possibly, we all have, but then it would have been for revenge, it would have been my way of informing the world how awfully it had made me suffer. But the silence of the evening, as I wandered home, had nothing to do with that storm, that far off boy. I simply wondered about the dead because their days had ended and I did not know how I would get through mine.”

“And wonders of wonders, they both shut up and did as I said. If I'd had time I would have pulled out my journal and made a note: Shame and Terric actually listened to me for once. Warn Hell. There's a freeze coming.”