This place is just too frickin precious," the cop said, eyeing a guy dressed in a hot pink leisure suit with makeup to match. "Give me rednecks and home-grown beer any day of the week over this X-culture bullshit.

I suppose this is for the best," Blay said into his shoulder. "You can't cook." "See? I'm so not Prince Charming.

Cursing herself, she said, "I'm going to man up here. I'm going to so be twenty-one. You're not going to believe how tight in the head I'm going to be. Really. For real.

Great rationalizations. All of which her adrenal gland middle-fingered and then carried right on.

It was right then and there that she'd realized there was no quota on misery for people, no quantifiable threshold that once reached, got you miraculously taken out of the distress pool.

Among the problems with shame was that it in fact did not make you shorter or quieter or less visible. You just felt like you were.

After a moment, Wrath turned to John. "This is Lassiter, the fallen angel. One of the last times he was here on earth, there was a plague in central Europe-" "Okay, that was so not my fault-" "-which wiped out two-thirds of the human population." "I'd like to remind you that you don't like humans." "They smell bad when they're dead." "All you mortal types do.