Sunlight feels warm and rough against your skin like a kiss on the cheek from your dad.

He may be a malevolent sorcerer, but Tiny Cooper is his own goddamned man, and if he wants to be a gigantic skipper, then that's his right as a huge American.

There are always answers. We just have to be smart enough.

Well," Peter Van Houten said, extending his hand to me. "It is at any rate a pleasure to meet such ontologically improbable creatures." I shook his swollen hand, and then he shook hands with Augustus. I was wondering what ontologically meant. Regardless, I liked it. Augustus and I were together in the Improbable Creatures Club: us and duck-billed platypuses.

Jesus, I'm not going to be one of those people who sits around talking about what they're going to do. I'm just going to do it.

...It was nice to spend time with someone so interesting.

Because you are beautiful. I enjoy looking at beautiful people, and I decided a while ago not to deny myself the simpler pleasures of existence