Don't miss the bus, boy. You're missing a lot of things in the world, better not miss that bus.

He hated to think of his own life stretching ahead of him that way, a long succession of days and nights that were fine - not good, not bad, not great, not lousy, not exciting, not anything.

Family life was wonderful. The streets were bleak. The playgrounds were bleak. But home was always warm. My mother and father had a great relationship. I always felt 'safe' there.

I have always had a sense that we are all pretty much alone in life, particularly in adolescence.

The possibility that hope comes out of hopelessness and that the opposite of things carry the seeds of birth - love out of hate, good out of evil. Didn't flowers grow out of dirt?

That's what Archie did - built a house nobody could anticipate a need for, except himself, a house that was invisible to everyone else.