There's not even real *popularity* at my school." "That," Coli said emphatically, "is a sentence that has only ever been spoken by popular people.

You're awfully philosophical for a girl that just got busted.

Becoming a father made me much more interested in the parent character in my novels. I've never found parents that interesting.

I believe the universe wants to be noticed. I think the universe is inprobably biased toward the consciousness, that it rewards intelligence in part because the universe enjoys its elegance being observed. And who am I, living in the middle of history, to tell the universe that it-or my observation of it-is temporary?

They were angry, I thought. Horrified. These teenagers, with their hormones, making out beneath a video broadcasting the shattered voice of a former father.

She was up and down—from fire and brimstone to smoke and ashes.

And then the line was quite but not dead. I almost felt like he was there in my room with me, but in a way it was better, like I was not in my room and he was not in his, but instead we were together in some invisible and tenuous third space that could only be visited on the phone.