From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs Basil E. Frankweiler

by E.L. Konigsburg

If you think of doing something in New York City, you can be certain that at least two thousand other people have that same thought. And of the two thousand who do, about one thousand will be standing in line waiting to do it.

Both Jamie and Claudia had acquired a talent for being near but never part of a group. (Some people, Saxonberg, never learn to do that all their lives, and some learn it all too well.)

But lying in bed just before going to sleep is the worst time for organized thinking; it is the best time for free thinking. Ideas drift like clouds in an undecided breeze, taking first this direction and then that.

Finding a secret can make everything else unimportant, you know.

Happiness is excitement that has found a settling down place, but there is always a little corner that keeps flapping around.