Uh-uh, dude. I tried it your way with the dating and the girls and the kissing and the drama, and man, I didn't like it. Plus, my best friend is a walking cautionary tale of what happens to you when romantic relationships don't involve marriage. Like you always say, kafir, everything ends in breakup, divorce, or death. I want to narrow my misery options to divorce or death - that's all.

I hope you didn't bring the Asian kid along thinking he's a computer genius. Because I'm not," Takumi said.

I always wondered if there was a purpose to the universe, if there was a plan, if there was some sort of organizing factor, hopefully that I played a role in.

I hated hurting him. Most of the time, I could forget about it, but the inexorable truth is this: They might be glad to have me around, but I was the alpha and the omega of my parents' suffering.

Given the final futility of our struggle, is the fleeting jolt of meaning that art gives us valuable? Or is the only value in passing the time as comfortable as possible? What should a story seek to emulate, Augustus? A ringing alarm? A call to arms? A morphine drip? Of course, like all interrogation of the universe, this line of inquiry inevitably reduces us to asking what it means to be human and whether—to borrow a phrase from the angst-encumbered sixteeen-year-olds you no doubt revile—there is a point to it all.

He liked the idea of coffee quite a lot—a warm drink that gave you energy and had been for centuries associated with sophisticates and intellectuals. But coffee itself tasted to him like caffeinated stomach bile.

All sorts of yayness floods my brain. Love is such a drug.