Teenagers have more intense reading experiences because they've had fewer of them. It's like the first time you fall in love. You have a connection to that first person you fell in love with because it was so intense and unprecedented.

You’re joining us for dinner, I hope?” asked his mom. She was small and brunette and vaguely mousy. “I guess?” I said. “I have to be home by ten. Also I don’t, um, eat meat?” “No problem. We’ll vegetarianize some,” she said. “Animals are just too cute?” Gus asked. “I want to minimize the number of deaths I am responsible for,” I said. Gus opened his mouth to respond but then stopped himself.

I don't want to hear another negative word about cheerleaders. If it weren't for cheerleaders, who would tell us when and how to be happy during athletic events? If it weren't for cheerleaders, how would America's prettiest girls get the exercise that's so vital to a healthy life?

I tried to tell myself that it could be worse, that the world was not a wish-granting factory, that I was living with cancer not dying of it, that I mustn't let it kill me before it kills me.

And he found himself thinking that maybe stories don't just make us matter to each other - maybe they're also the only way to the infinite mattering he'd been after for so long.

Youth is counted sweetest by those who are no longer young.

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.