Can I ask you about Caroline Mathers?" "And you say there's no afterlife.

You know, like when you look in the mirror and the thing you see is not the thing as it really is.

I am a grenade," I said again. "I just want to stay away from people and read books and think and be with you guys because there's nothing I can do about hurting you: You're too invested, so just please let me do that, okay? "I'm going to go to my room and read for awhile, okay? I'm fine. I really am fine: I just want to go read for a while.

I hadn’t read a real series like that since I was a kid, and it was exciting to live again in an infinite fiction.

When surprised and excited and innocent Gus emerged from Grand Gesture Metaphorically Inclined Augustus, I literally could not resist.

As lives go, I'll take the quietly desperate over the radically bipolar.

Half-drunk on well-creamed gas station coffee and the exhilarating loneliness of a freeway in nighttime.