Bud Quotes & Sayings

I had agreed with her that I should start collecting the Dial records featuring Bird, Max Roach, Al Haig, Bud Powell, Dizzy Gillespie and others who she said were going to be the 'masters.' Each payday I kept out enough money to pay my own way at Mother's, and spent the rest on records and books. Mother — Maya Angelou

There are times when words are extra, like raindrops on drenched grass. There are times for holding. He held her ... — Bud Macfarlane Jr.

Feel it. Know it. Be it. You and the bud are the same. You are one. You are the bud. — Robert Jordan

This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath, May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet — William Shakespeare

They disallowed this and disallowed that, and now I can't even get my head above water! — Bud Abbott

The U.S. Open is the only place in America where you can't trade in your Mercedes-Benz for a hamburger. — Bud Collins

My life is like a faded leaf,
My harvest dwindled to a husk:
Truly my life is void and brief
And tedious in the barren dusk;
My life is like a frozen thing,
No bud nor greenness can I see:
Yet rise it shall - the sap of Spring;
O Jesus, rise in me. — Christina Rossetti

Denial is for losers. Face your crap and move on. Otherwise you'll get old and depressed and turn into a scary pod person whose most pressing issue in life is when they get to trade in the can of Dr Pepper for the can of Bud. — Estelle Laure

Beauty is but a vain and doubtful good;
A shining gloss that vadeth suddenly;
A flower that dies when first it 'gins to bud;
A brittle that's broken presently;
A doubtful good, a gloss, a glass, a flower,
Lost, vaded, broken, dead within an hour.
And as goods lost are seld or never found,
As vaded gloss no rubbing will refresh,
As flowers dead lie withered on the ground,
As broken glass no cement can redress;
So beauty blemished once, for ever lost,
In spite of physic, painting, pain and cost. — William Shakespeare

The sun meets not the springing bud that stretches towards him with half the certainty that God, the source of all good, communicates himself to the soul that longs to partake of him. — William Law

If you need a gun to do it with, you aren't doing it right." Sheriff Bud Smith. — James Hickey

'Monday Night Football' has the good and the bad points. The bad point is you have to wait around all day, and it disrupts your schedule for the next week. Now you have one less day to prepare for the following week. — Bud Grant

Some of the most innovative things in football I see at high school games. It's not the play - it's when you run it. The right time. — Bud Grant

I went up to his [Hank Jones'] house and there were four guys there: Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, and Max Roach. Not a bad place to be. Scared shitless, but a nice place to be on my second day in New York. — Ray Brown

I think it's God that makes people care for people, Jefferson. I think it's God makes children play and people sing. I believe it's God that brings loved ones together. I believe it's God that makes trees bud and food grow out of the earth. — Ernest J. Gaines

We had an episode where Bud asks his dad, I was named after the beer, right, Dad? And Ed ONeill, who played my dad, says, Uh ... Right, son! My theory is that Bud Bundy was named after marijuana. — David Faustino

I know it's hard to see," he said, "but God shows me his work in you every time we meet. I see your faith growing inside you like a beautiful spring bud, just ready to blossom. Whatever you think you're facing, the obstacles you's struggling to overcome, they's like rain feeding that bud inside you. Don't fear the storm. He's in the storm, just like he's in the gentle breeze. He gots you right where he wants you." I hugged — Jennifer H. Westall

Everything speaks: the flowing airstream and the sailing halycon, the blade of grass, the flower, the bud, the element; did you imagine the universe to be otherwise? — Victor Hugo

So passeth, in the passing of a day,
Of mortall life the leafe, the bud, the flowre — Edmund Spenser

EPITAPH ON AN INFANT Ere Sin could blight or Sorrow fade, Death came with friendly care: The opening Bud to Heaven convey'd, And bade it blossom there. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

A city built upon mud;
A culture built upon profit;
Free speech nipped in the bud,
The minority always guilty.
Why should I want to go back
To you, Ireland, my Ireland?
...
Her mountains are still blue, her rivers flow
Bubbling over the boulders.
She is both a bore and a bitch;
Better close the horizon,
Send her no more fantasy, no more longings which
Are under a fatal tariff.
For common sense is the vogue
And she gives her children neither sense nor money
Who slouch around the world with a gesture and a brogue
And a faggot of useless memories. — Louis MacNeice

I was seventeen and a half, smoking so much bud that if I remembered an hour from any one of those days it would have been a lot. — Junot Diaz

A child her wayward pencil drew
On margins of her book;
Garlands of flower, dancing elves,
Bud, butterfly, and brook,
Lessons undone, and plum forgot,
Seeking with hand and heart
The teacher whom she learned to love
Before she knew t'was Art. — Louisa May Alcott

Deep Blue didn't win by being smarter than a human; it won by being millions of times faster than a human. Deep Blue had no intuition. An expert human player looks at a board position and immediately sees what areas of play are most likely to be fruitful or dangerous, whereas a computer has no innate sense of what is important and must explore many more options. Deep Blue also had no sense of the history of the game, and didn't know anything about its opponent. It played chess yet didn't understand chess, in the same way a calculator performs arithmetic bud doesn't understand mathematics. — Jeff Hawkins

I think that the best kind of change, is the change that comes from the inside and begins it's way out until it emerges on the outside; a change that is born underneath then continues and spreads until it has reached the surface. That's a true change. A powerful change. And I have found that while we are emerging, changing into something glorious; it is actually us becoming who we really are. A water lily is born underneath the water, inside the soil at the bottom of the river or lake. And the water lily has always been a water lily for that whole time that it was sprouting out of the wet soil, reaching up through the dark water towards the sunlight, stretching and grasping for the surface; where it then buds and blooms on the outside in the sunshine. It doesn't bud and bloom on the surface and then try to reach down below into the soil. — C. JoyBell C.

As with the bud, so with the blossom. A boy is the only thing known from which a man can be made. I hope that we as parents are teaching our children that they are the sons and daughters of God, and that they have the capacity to become like him. It was the old Edinburgh weaver who prayed, 'O God, help me to hold a high opinion of myself.' Likewise I would counsel young people to hold a high opinion of themselves, to remember who they really are, and to put their faith in their Heavenly Father. — Paul H. Dunn

The white hands of the tenebrous belle deal the hand of destiny. Her fingernails are longer than those of the mandarins of ancient China and each is pared to a fine point. These and teeth as fine and white as spikes of spun sugar are the visible signs of the destiny she wistfully attempts to evade via the arcana; her claws and teeth have been sharpened on centuries of corpses, she is the last bud of the poison tree that sprang from the loins of Vlad the Impaler who picnicked on corpses in the forests of Transylvania.
The walls of her bedroom are hung with black satin, embroidered with tears of pearl. At the rooms four corners are funerary urns and bowls which emit slumbrous, pungent fumes of incense. In the centre is an elaborate catafalque, in ebony, surrounded by long candles in enormous silver candlesticks. In a white lace negligee stained a little with blood, the Countess climbs up on her catafalque at dawn each morning and lies down in an open coffin. — Angela Carter

Mr Speaker, I smell a rat; I see him forming in the air and darkening the sky; but I will nip him in the bud. — Boyle Roche

But we are mostly what we are, and the turtle stretching toward delicious buds on high does not lighten his carapace by his resolve. — Arthur Miller

And all the woods are alive with the murmur and sound of Spring,
And the rose-bud breaks into pink on the climbing briar,
And the crocus-bed is a quivering moon of fire
Girdled round with the belt of an amethyst ring. — Oscar Wilde

Winter is not here yet. There's a little flower, up yonder, the last bud from the multitude of bluebells that clouded those turf steps in July with a lilac mist. Will you clamber up and pluck it to show papa? — Emily Bronte

I have to keep my mouth shut about Nam though. All of these guys want to believe they were fighting an honorable war, and that their conduct deserves respect. They want the public to treat them like they're heroes - like the WWII vets were." "Instead, smart ass, pampered kids call them names and throw dog shit at them. — Bud Rudesill

Well, I always had a chauffer, because I have never driven a car in my life. I still can't drive. — Bud Abbott

She never told her love, but let concealment, like a worm 'i th' bud, feed on her damask cheek. She pinned in thought; and, with a green and yellow melancholy, she sat like Patience on a monument, smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed? We men may say more, swear more; but indeed our shows are more than will; for we still prove much in our vows but little in our love. — William Shakespeare

You can never lose anything. You only gain the moment of beauty like a bud transforms into a flower. — Debasish Mridha

Inflation is continuous and eternal, with big bangs happening all the time, with universes sprouting from other universes. In this picture, universes can "bud" off into other universes, creating a "multiverse." In this theory, spontaneous breaking may occur anywhere within our universe, allowing an entire universe to bud off our universe. It also means that our own universe might have budded from a previous universe. In the chaotic inflationary model, the multiverse is eternal, even if individual universes are not. Some universes may have a very large Omega, in which case they immediately vanish into a big crunch after their big bang. Some universes only have a tiny Omega and expand forever. Eventually, the multiverse becomes dominated by those universes that inflate by a huge amount.
In retrospect, the idea of parallel universes is forced upon us. — Michio Kaku

There buds the promise of celestial worth. — Edward Young

I love you, Bud," he whispered to Billy and two more tears escaped.
"I love you too, Mitch," Billy whispered back, my breath hitched and both males' eyes came to me.
I waved my wineglass at them and murmured, "Don't mind me. Have your moment."
Mitch leaned back, letting Billy go and grinning at me. "Men don't have moments."
"You do," I returned. "I'm witnessing one."
"This isn't a moment, honey, it's a meeting of the minds," Mitch contradicted me. — Kristen Ashley

She felt the blazing heat of his mouth cover her, his tongue searching the tender flesh, arrowing to the sensitive bud where her desire centered. Her knees weakened, and she would have collapsed had his hands not cupped beneath her buttocks, gripping and steadying her. Moaning, she strained against the sliding, tormenting delight of his tongue, until she began to stiffen at the imminent approach of climax. — Lisa Kleypas

Answer July-
Where is the Bee-
Where is the Blush-
Where is the Hay?
Ah, said July-
Where is the Seed-
Where is the Bud-
Where is the May-
Answer Thee-Me- — Emily Dickinson

The thorn tree just began to bud
And greening stained the sheltering hedge,
An many a violet beside the wood
Peeped blue between the withered sedge;
The sun gleamed warm the bank beside,
'Twas pleasant wandering out a while
Neath nestling bush to lonely hide,
Or bend a musings o'er a stile. — John Clare

How lucky have we been that the face of baseball for the past two decades, through ups and downs, has been Derek Jeter. — Bud Selig

The bud disappears when the blossom breaks through, and we might say that the former is refuted by the latter; in the same way when the fruit comes, the blossom may be explained to be a false form of the plant's existence, for the fruit appears as its true nature in place of the blossom. The ceaseless activity of their own inherent nature makes these stages moments of an organic unity, where they not merely do not contradict one another, but where one is as necessary as the other; and constitutes thereby the life of the whole. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

On and on eternally
Shall your altered fluid run,
Bud and bloom and go to seed;
But your singing days are done — Edna St. Vincent Millay

The appetite for more instant replay in the sport is very low. — Bud Selig

If you take any flower you please and look it over and turn it about and smell it and feel it and try to find out all its little secrets, not of flower only but of leaf, bud and stem as well, you will discover many wonderful things. This is how you make friends with plants, and very good friends you will find them to the end of our lives. — Gertrude Jekyll

Every game is an opportunity to measure yourself against your own potential. — Bud Wilkinson

Eternity is with us, inviting our contemplation perpetually, but we are too frightened, lazy, and suspicious to respond; too arrogant to still our thought, and let divine sensation have its way. It needs industry and goodwill if we would make that transition; for the process involves a veritable spring-cleaning of the soul, a turning-out and rearrangement of our mental furniture, a wide opening of closed windows, that the notes of the wild birds beyond our garden may come to us fully charged with wonder and freshness, and drown with their music the noise of the gramaphone within. Those who do this, discover that they have lived in a stuffy world, whilst their inheritance was a world of morning-glory:where every tit-mouse is a celestial messenger, and every thrusting bud is charged with the full significance of life. — Evelyn Underhill

Primer of Love [Lesson 14]
I think the best thing I can do is to be a distraction.
A husband lives and breathes his work all day long.
If he comes home to more table thumping,
how can the poor man ever relax?
- Jackie Kennedy

Lesson 14) Learn to nip lover's quarrels in the bud
by distraction and humor -- without raising your voice.

This does not include mastering that passive aggressive ploy called the silent treatment which is much louder and destructive than outright screaming. Nipping techniques include distraction, humor, rough sex and counting backwards from MCLV in Latin.Once you've mastered this technique, you'll spend the night neatly tucked in each other's arms -- though her ass will be a little sore. No argument about that. — Beryl Dov

You know, bud, I don't know you from Adam, but that's my baby sister you're hanging on to. So I'm thinking the wisest course of action for you is to let her go and introduce yourself. Pronto. (Rain) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

I seem to have dodged all my days with one or two persons, and lived upon expectation,
as if the bud would surely blossom; and soI am content to live. — Henry David Thoreau

Stevia does something funny to the chemistry of my mouth. There's no fooling a taste bud, in my experience. — Jonathan Franzen

St. Louis is closer to Minneapolis than Milwaukee is. — Bud Selig

But in summer, welcoming summer, the rocks are soft-fledged with moss. The forest floor is bouncy with fresh shoots and enthusiastic blooms; the twisted angles of the branches are laced by bud and leaf. — Tara O'Brady

The woman, who belonged to the courtesan class, was celebrated for an embonpoint unusual for her age, which had earned for her the sobriquet of "Boule de Suif" (Tallow Ball). Short and round, fat as a pig, with puffy fingers constricted at the joints, looking like rows of short sausages; with a shiny, tightly-stretched skin and an enormous bust filling out the bodice of her dress, she was yet attractive and much sought after, owing to her fresh and pleasing appearance. Her face was like a crimson apple, a peony-bud just bursting into bloom; she had two magnificent dark eyes, fringed with thick, heavy lashes, which cast a shadow into their depths; her mouth was small, ripe, kissable, and was furnished with the tiniest of white teeth. — Guy De Maupassant

Yet writers say, as in the sweetest bud
The eating canter dwells, so eating love
Inhabits in the finest wits of all. — William Shakespeare

Hurricane Ginger." "I'll outlast that wimpy storm by a lifetime. — Bud Rudesill

It takes courage to push yourself to places you have never been before ... to test yout limits ... to break through barriers. And the day came when the risk it took to stay tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossum. — Anais Nin

Being cold for a short period of time is not life-threatening. You can perform a task when you're cold. We proved that when the Vikings played outside. — Bud Grant

Sometimes, with Cinnamon, it was like she fell into this "impress the guy" mode and forgot the primary rule of friendship, which was to make your bud look good in front of her boy. Not stupid. — Lauren Myracle

Bud forth as the rose planted by the brooks of waters. Give ye a sweet odor as frankincense. Send forth flowers, as the lily ... and bring forth leaves in grace, and praise with canticles, and bless the Lord in his works. - Ecclesiasticus 39:17-19 — Douai-Rheims Bible

People who have Jesus abiding in them lack absolutely nothing. — Bud McCord

The problem was Mike Tyson always had trouble with bigger men. Even fighters like Bud Green, "Bonecrusher", he had trouble with them whether he wanted to or not. He would have had great trouble with Lennox Lewis, particularly since he maximized his shortness by crouching, and he couldn't fight inside so the guy would pick him apart like Buster Douglas. — Bert Sugar

No daintie flowre or herbe that growes on grownd, No arborett with painted blossoms drest And smelling sweete, but there it might be fownd To bud out faire, and throwe her sweete smels al arownd. — Edmund Spenser

Rarely is any good done without difficulty; the devil is too subtle and the world too corrupt not to attempt to nip such a good work in the bud — Vincent De Paul

Daddy, I'll be fine. Smalley says some people are late bloomers, that's all.
Actually, what she'd said was, 'Tis a marvellous bud that opens its petals at midnight - not so eager as the weeds of daybreak.
I figured that translated to, Just because you're not a slut like Veronica, doesn't mean you'll end up alone. — Cecily White

The seed of a tree has the nature of a branch or twig or bud. It is a part of the tree, but if separated and set in the earth to be better nourished, the embryo or young tree contained in it takes root and grows into a new tree. — Isaac Newton

He leaned against the railing of the gazebo and crossed his arms over his chest. "You've gotta give me some incentive, babe." "Hmm. Like this kind of incentive?" She slid her hands to her breasts. His breath hitched when she squeezed the lush mounds with her palms, the motion making her tits look bigger, fuller. With an impish smile, she stroked the underside of each breast, circling her nipples with her fingers and then dragging her thumbs over each hard bud. — Elle Kennedy

Confidence is the invisible cement that binds a team together. — Bud Wilkinson

Each opening bud, and care-perfected seed, Is as a page, where we may read of God. — Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps

That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string I wound
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her. No pain felt she;
I am quite sure she felt no pain.
As a shut bud that holds a bee,
I warily oped her lids: again
Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.
And I untightened the next tress
About her neck; her cheek once more
Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss ... — Robert Browning

There's nothing good or bad, except by comparison" (210) - Bud Selig "Effort is Everything — Denzel Washington

For how smart we think we are, how facile with words, we don't have a word for this feeling, the feeling of being blessed by belonging. If the universe is an unfolding bud, then I am a part of its creative surge, along with the flowing of water and the growing of pines. I can find a kind of camaraderie in this universe, once I recover from the astonishment of it. Or maybe not camaraderie exactly. What is the opposite of loneliness? — Kathleen Moore

We came to woodlands, with leaves unfurling on every branch, as if one blow of spring's green hammer had set them exploding from the bud. — Mark Lawrence

You're imprinted in high school more than any other point in your life. — Bud Grant

I got my service dog when I was medically retired out of the military, and it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I wish every medically retired serviceman could have a service dog. He's amazing. He's my best bud. I go everywhere and anywhere with him. — Marcus Luttrell

There is nothing good or bad, except by comparison" (209) - "Effort is Everything" by Bud Selig — Denzel Washington

As the bud a leaf, so at last the thought becomes a word. — Richard B. Garnett

The peach-bud glows, the wild bee hums, and wind-flowers wave in graceful gladness. — Lucy Larcom

A Marine likes a good fight and respects a good fighter. You've got yourself one fine Marine for an escort and the whole Marine Corps behind you. — Bud Rudesill

There was a Sears, Roebuck catalogue painfully twisted and shellacked and tied with a red cord. The white card beneath it said, An inexpensive doorstop." ... There were catsup bottles made into bud vases, closthespins decorated with crepe paper butterflies for use as curtin hold-backers, crocheted bags for silverware, bouquets of crepe paper and velvet flowers, an enormous funeral set piece of white organdy gardenias and dark green oilcloth leaves with REST IN PEACE spelled out in white pipe cleaners, embroidered pictures, burned wood match boxes, and fancy pillows by the hundreds. The pillows embraced every sentiment from FRANKY AND JOHNNY WERE LOVERS in black beads on a cerise satin background to the Twenty-Third Psalm in white on black velvet. It was an impressive exhibit of what loneliness can do to people. — Betty McDonald

If we cut open the bud of a beautiful rose in order to see how it is 'packed' and what it is going to look like, what sort of a bloom will we get? — Ian Gardner

A dialogue is very important. It is a form of communication in which question and answer continue till a question is left without an answer. Thus the question is suspended between the two persons involved in this answer and question. It is like a bud with untouched blossoms ... If the question is left totally untouched by thought, it then has its own answer because the questioner and answerer, as persons, have disappeared. This is a form of dialogue in which investigation reaches a certain point of intensity and depth, which then has a quality that thought can never reach. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Awkward conversations. They're the heart of the drug trade. The driving force that keeps criminals out of jail is paranoia. You can think you know people, but the truth is, you never know who they're talking to. The life of an outlaw: Around every corner lies a cop. In every basement waits a bust. Every friend is the guy who sells you out to keep his own ass out of jail. Sure, it was rare, but you just never knew.
The result was a series of shorthand and euphemisms so obscure even the pros often weren't sure what they were talking about. Sales became pickups. Pot, ganja, bud, or weed became lettuce, green, happy, herb, smoke... the list went on, and changed from dealer to dealer. — Daniel Younger

And then God gave me insight: this was winter. It would end, in time, but not by my own doing. My responsibility was simply to know the season, and match my actions and inactions to it. It was to learn the slow hard discipline of waiting. It was my season to believe in spite of - to believe in the absence of evidence or emotion, when there's nothing, no bud, no color, no light, no birdsong, to validate belief. It was my time to walk without sight. — Mark Buchanan

However, he brought to mind instances of cultured fellows that promised so brilliantly nipped in the bud of premature decay and nobody to blame but themselves. — James Joyce

We dream our dreams away. — Bud Flanagan

Strangely, although they may seem worlds apart, boxing and tennis have a certain kinship. Two individuals head-to-head, probing for weakness and attacking it. Footwork, timing and stamina are essential. Just you and your opponent until one of you is beaten. There's no brain damage in tennis - although sometimes I wonder. — Bud Collins

The Law of Divine Compensation posits that this is a self-organizing and self-correcting universe: the embryo becomes a baby, the bud becomes a blossom, the acorn becomes an oak tree. Clearly, there is some invisible force that is moving every aspect of reality to its next best expression. — Marianne Williamson

Have you ever looked at the bud of a magnolia flower? It's a tight little pod that stays closed up for a long time on the end of its branch until one day, out of nowhere, it finally bursts open into this gigantic, gorgeous, fragrant flower that's ten times bigger than the bud itself. It's impossible to imagine that such a big beautiful thing could pop out of that tiny little bud. But it does. — Joanna Gaines

It did matter to get out of bed. There were webs to weave. Strings to grasp. Packages to deliver. Conversations to start. Thoughts to be expressed. Sams to slam into. Oceans to swim. And sad little men hiding in electrical sockets, waiting to be born of the human imagination. — Bud Macfarlane Jr.

Observing any human being from infancy, seeing someone come into existence, like a new flower in bud, each petal first tightly furled around another, and then the natural loosening and unfurling, the opening into a bloom, the life of that bloom, must be something wonderful to behold; to see experience collect in the eyes, around the corners of the mouth, the weighing down of the brow, the heaviness in heart and soul, the thick gathering around the waist, the breasts, the slowing down of footsteps not from old age but only with the caution of life-all this is something so wonderful to observe, so wonderful to behold; the pleasure for the observer, the beholder, is an invisible current between the two, observed and observer, beheld and beholder, and I believe that no life is complete, no life is really whole, without this invisible current, which is in many ways a definition of love. — Jamaica Kincaid

I happened to be in a position in Superior where I could play three sports, and when I came to Minnesota, I had the understanding they would allow me to play three sports. Kids now don't have the same amount of time. You have coaches that think baseball is 10 months a year. Hockey is 11 or 12 months a year. — Bud Grant

Death came with friendly care; The opening bud to heaven conveyed, And bade it blossom there. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

For me, vulnerability led to anxiety, which led to shame, which led to disconnection, which led to Bud Light. — Brene Brown

It (scent) was barely there at all, but in the hint of its existence it was as fragile as night blossoms - not too sweet but just enough, like the dew on a requiem bud in the palest hour of dawn. — Laini Taylor

Personal growth will cause a ripple effect as the growth in consciousness of enough people, one by one, can create general change, and lasting social improvements. — Bud Harris

Over the years, I've always had one Labrador and usually two. I've had some great dogs, and I've had some dogs that didn't work out. I found them good homes and gave them away. — Bud Grant

She's my wife. Back off, jarhead," he tossed back over his shoulder. Jared laughed, and it wasn't a mean laugh. Cassie bit back a grin as he stepped back, giving Mitch room to turn around before stepping right back into his personal space. His smile was knowing and totally awesome. "Actually, she's Cassie. She's nobody's wife, because the loser she was married to wasn't smart enough to know just how awesome his wife was when he had her. So if that's you, I'm sorry, bud. And I'm guessing it is, because only a moron who's never served in uniform would call someone a jarhead. You gotta be a Marine to use that term, and only to another Marine. You fail on both points, but try harder next time. — Cora Seton

Who his father was. But she left a clue: posters of Herman E. Calloway and his famous band, the Dusky Devastators of the Depression!!!!!! Bud's got an idea that those posters will lead him to his father. Once he decides to hit the road and find this mystery man, nothing can stop him - not hunger, not cops, not vampires, not even Herman E. Calloway himself. A crackerjack read-aloud. — Christopher Paul Curtis