“He'd gone from sixteen to seventy-five in a matter of seconds, but the old-man smell happened instantly, like boom. Congratulations! You stink!”

“What I really wanted to do was just have this sonic boom, with a flash, and have the level change on you instantly.”

“Every play is rhythmic control. If you want an audience to go on a journey, it’s rhythmic control. You’re crafting when they lean in, when they push back, when they breathe, when they surrender. It takes you probably five to six minutes to build trust with an audience. A musical you can build trust in three notes. Boom, boom, boom, you’re instantly seduced. So musicals have this easy potency, but generally, in my opinion, they waste them, because a musical is incredibly hard to do…”

“I’ll tell you somethin, Sheriff. Nineteen is old enough to know that if you have got somethin that means the world to you it’s all that more likely it’ll get took away. Sixteen was, for that matter. I think about that”

“A book has got smell. A new book smells great. An old book smells even better. An old book smells like ancient Egypt.”

“Sometimes he felt like he'd been gone his whole life--in exile, away from the place he was supposed to be, and that, soldier-like, he was pining to be returned. Homesick for a place he'd never been.”

“How old are you Johnny" she asked.
Sixteen."
And what's that-a boy or a man?"
He laughed. "A boy in time of peace and a man in time of war.”

“The real menace in dealing with a five-year-old is that in no time at all you begin to sound like a five-year-old.”

“The best day of my life happened when I was five and almost died at Disney World. I'm sixteen now, so you can imagine that's left me with quite a few days of major suckage.”

“Sickness, the serpent, is coming to bite you,
Death, the old dark man, is coming to carry you off,
Rest uneasy, you stinking carrion, on your gold beds.”