If there is an amateur reader still left in the world--or anybody who just reads and runs--I ask him or her, with untellable affection and gratitude, to split the dedication of this book four ways with my wife and children.

For joy, apparently, it was all Franny could do to hold the phone, even with both hands.

Franny has the measles, for one thing. Incidentally, did you hear her last week? She went on at beautiful length about how she used to fly all around the apart…

I don't care where an actor acts. It can be in summer stock, it can be over a radio, it can be over television, it can be in a goddam Broadway theatre, complet…

There are certain common privileges of a writer, the benefit whereof, I hope, there will be no reason to doubt; particularly, that where I am not understood, i…

Dedication: To my daughter Leonora without whose never-failing sympathy and encouragement this book would have been finished in half the time.

'Lisey?' Amanda asked. Her brow was deeply furrowed. 'I'm sorry,' Lisey said. 'I just kind of...went off there for a second'. 'You often do,' Amanda said. 'I t…