You are a side effect," Van Houten continued, "of an evolutionary process that cares little for individual lives. You are a failed experiment in mutation.

Colin had always preferred baths; one of his general policies in life was never to do anything standing up that could just as easily be done lying down

I went on spouting bullshit Encouragements as Gus's parents, arm in arm, hugged each other and nodded at every word. Funerals, I had decided, are for the living.

Take a picture of this so Isaac can see it when they invent robot eyes.

The consequences of being un-cool feel so big that a lot of times you end of not finding ways to have open and honest conversations.

I believe in hope, in what is something called ”radical hope.” I believe there is hope for all of us, even amid the suffering. And that’s why I write fiction, probaby. It’s my attempt to keep that fragile strand of radical hope, to buld a fire in the darkness.r

I felt tired for the first time, and I thought of us lying down on some grassy patch of SeaWorld together, me on my back and she on her side with her arm draped against me, her head on my shoulder, facing me. Not doing anything--just lying there together beneath the sky, the night here so well lit that it drowns out the stars. And maybe I could feel her breathe against my neck, and maybe we could just stay there until morning and then the people would walk past us as they came into the park, and they would see us and think that we were tourists, too, and we could just disappear into them.