The world," he said, "is not a wish-granting factory," and then he broke down, just for one moment, his sob roaring impotent like a clap of thunder unaccompanied by lightning, the terrible ferocity that amateurs in the field of suffering might mistake for weakness.

Throughout the book, she refers to herself as "the side effect," which is just totally correct. Cancer kids are essentially side effects of the relentless mutation that made the diversity of life on earth possible.

Sometimes people don't understand the promises they're making when they make them.

You can trust that caring, as a rule, ends poorly,” which is true. Caring doesn’t sometimes lead to misery. It always does.

It seems to me that all the things we keep in sealed boxes are both alive and dead until we open the box, that the unobserved is both there and not.

Is it still cool to go to the mall?' she asked. 'I take quite a lot of pride in not knowing what's cool,' I answered.

Shame about how we’re gonna die here, though. I mean, seriously. An Arab and a half-Jew enter a store in Tennessee. It’s the beginning of a joke, and the punch line is “sodomy’’.