“A sombrero fell out of the sky and landed on the main street of town in front of the mayor, his cousin, and a person out of work. The day was scrubbed clean by the desert air. The sky was blue. It was the blue of human eyes, waiting for something to happen. There was no reason for a sombrero to fall out of the sky. No airplane or helicopter was passing overhead and it was not a religious holiday.”

“I guess the last remaining question is: What about the sombrero? It's still there, lying in the street but its temperature had returned to -24 degrees and fortunately for America it stayed there. Millions of tourists have walked all around it but not one of them has seen it, though it is in plain sight. How can you miss a very cold white sombrero lying in the Main Street of a town? In other words: There is more to life than meets the eye.”

“There was something dead in my heart.I tried to figure out what it was by the strength of the smell. I knew that it was not a lion or a sheep or a dog. Using logical deduction, I came to the conclusion that it was a mouse.I had a dead mouse in my heart.”

“I had become so quiet and so small in the grass by the pond that I was barely noticeable, hardly there. I sat there watching their living room shining out of the dark beside the pond. It looked like a fairy-tale functioning happily in the post-World War II gothic of America before television crippled the imagination and turned people indoors and away from living out their own fantasies with dignity. Anyway, I just kept getting smaller and smaller beside the pond, more and more unnoticed in the darkening summer grass until I disappeared into the 32 years that have passed since then.”

“Somebody should have taken him to a stationary store and pointed out the difference between an envelope and a whore.”

“The smallest snowstorm on record took place an hour ago in my back yard. It was approximately two flakes. I waited for more to fall, but that was it. The entire storm was two flakes.”

“He looked as if he'd got a lot of pleasure out of going ten rounds with your grandmother and making sure she went the whole distance.”