“Maybe that was how it was with all first loves. They own a little piece of your heart, always. Conrad at twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, even seventeen years old.”

“I'm not buying this. If, if you're eleven years old, or twelve years old, thirteen, and you have a strong bond with your family, OK. Even if the guy [kidnapper] threatens you - this and that. … If you can get away, you get away.”

“There is no significant idea which cannot be explained to an intelligent twelve year old boy in fifteen minutes.”

“It's my heart that is tired. A thirteen-year-old heart shouldn't feel like this.”

“Old is always fifteen years from now.”

“I had a real job at fourteen years old. At seventeen, I was on my own. At twenty, I cut the liver out of a drifter and gave it to my father! 'Cause my dad's a drinker and I love my dad. And for eighty bucks, you can do anything in Mexico!”

“Old age is always fifteen years older than I am.”

“Maybe she'd always been there. Maybe strangers enter your heart first and then you spent the rest of your life searching for them.”

“To me, old age is always fifteen years older than I am.”

“A Jewish man with parents alive is a fifteen-year-old boy, and will remain a fifteen-year-old boy till they die.”