He knows what we want, you bet he whispered. No flies on that preacher. I like him. I like any man who can do things without a diagram and directions for using.

The stage was my obsession from age 6. . . . By my early teens, I had become so conspicuous a Stage Door Johnny that the manager of the National Theater, Washington's one Broadway tryout house in the pre-Kennedy Center era, took pity on me and hired me as a ticket taker.

We felt like total ning-nongs.

Professor Trelawney kept predicting Harry’s death, which he found extremely annoying.