that while the world wasn't built for humans, we were built for the world.

Did I help you toward a fate you didn't want, Alaska, or did I just assist in your willful self-destruction?

You cannot invent an algorithm that is as good at recommending books as a good bookseller, and that's the secret weapon of the bookstore - is that no algorithm will ever understand readers the way that other readers can understand readers.

Babies are made through an act that you will eventually find intriguing but for right now will just sort of horrify you, and also sometimes people do stuff that involves baby-making parts that does not actually involve making babies, like for instance kiss each other in places that are not on the face.

All the things paper-thin and paper-frail, and all the people too.

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

The phrase booze and mischief left me worrying I'd stumbled into what my mother referred to as "the wrong crowd," but for the wrong crowd, they both seemed awfully smart.