“All right,” she said a little sarcastically. “I was going to assume you liked eating babies and sacrificing virgins, but I might as well ask, what do you do for fun?”“I languish in sin,” I replied in the same tone. “I take my babies rare, and my virgins over easy.”

“Are you a virgin?” I asked, “A virgin who’s gonna tear out my heart?”“Yes … no … wait.” She looked at me. “I’m not going to rip out your heart.”“Thanks for clearing that up,” I said“Is that okay with you?” she asked softly.“Okay with me?”,“No, it’s not okay at all,” I replied.“Why not?” She looked down at her toes.“I want you to rip out my heart.”She smiled, pressed her hand to my chest, and said, “I could never do that.”You already have, I thought as I took her hand in mine”

“My mother said she already knew how I was. She could tell I was like that since I was a baby. She told me a story about when I was a toddler. She said that one day, she heard an alarm clock ringing in her room and when she went inside, she saw me bent over it. When she got closer, she could she me shaking baby powder on it!“What are you doing, Joey?” She asked me.“Baby crying,” was my reply.”

“You were just babies then!", she said."What?" I said."You were just babies in the war - like the ones upstairs!"I nodded that this was true. We had been foolish virgins in the war, right at the end of childhood."But you're not going to write it that way, are you." This wasn't a question. It was an accusation."I-I don't know", I said."Well, I know," she said. "You'll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you'll be played in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men. And war will look just wonderful, so we'll have a lot more of them. And they'll be fought by babies like the babies upstairs."So then I understood. It was war that made her so angry. She didn't want her babies or anybody else's babies killed in wars. And she thought wars were partly encouraged by books and movies.So I held up my right hand and I made her a promise: "Mary," I said, "I don't think this book of mine will ever be finished. I must have written five thousand pages by now, and thrown them all away. If I ever do finish it, though, I give you my word of honor: there won't be a part for Frank Sinatra or John Wayne."I tell you what," I said, "I'll call it 'The Children's Crusade.'"She was my friend after that.”

“Are you going to do it?" he asked. "Maybe," I said.Don't 'maybe' me, baby. It's written all over you. I'd almost be willing to go along, you know. Of all my relations, I like sex the best and Eric the least."I lit a cigarette, while I considered.”

“Then you should say what you mean," the March Hare went on. "I do," Alice hastily replied; "at least--at least I mean what I say--that's the same thing, you know." "Not the same thing a bit!" said the Hatter. "You might just as well say that "I see what I eat" is the same thing as "I eat what I see"!”