The job of reading is to use stories as a way into seeing other people as we see ourselves

The nature of impending fatherhood is that you are doing something that you're unqualified to do, and then you become qualified while doing it.

Getting you a date to prom is so hard that the hypothetical idea itself is actually used to cut diamonds. Ben, getting you a date to prom is so hard that the American government believes the problem cannot be solved with diplomacy, but will instead require force.

We have to live with ambiguity. We have to give ourselves over to it. The question is: How? How are we going to live in a universe where important questions will always go unanswered?

We all use the future to escape the present.

Worry is yet another side effect of dying.

When it comes to girls (and in Colin's case, it so often did), everyone has a type. Colin Singleton's type was not physical but linguistic: he liked Katherines. And not Katies or Kats or Kitties or Cathys or Rynns or Trinas or Kays or Kates or, god forbid, Catherines. K-A-T-H-E-R-I-N-E. He had dated 19 girls. All of them had been named Katherine. And all of them- every single solitary one- had dumped him.