Also, it was a bit hopeless," he said. "A bit defeatist." "If by defeatist you mean honest, then I agree." "I don't think defeatism is honest, " Dad answered. "I refuse to accept that.

[This] is very important to remember when reading or writing or talking or whatever: You are never, ever choosing whether to use symbols. You are choosing which symbols to use.

I smiled. She smiled. I believed the smile.

There is no Them. There are only facets of Us.

And now life has become the future. Every moment of your life is lived for the future—you go to high school so you can go to college so you can get a good job so you can get a nice house so you can afford to send your kids to college so they can get a good job so they can get a nice house so they can afford to send their kids to college.

Thomas Edison's last words were 'It's very beautiful over there'. I don't know where there is, but I believe it's somewhere, and I hope it's beautiful.

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.