We landed, in fact, parallel to a canal, like there were two runways: one for us and one for waterfowl.

I don't have a favourite book, I have hundreds.

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.

They couldn't bear the idea of death being a big black nothing.

But I was not in the band, because I suffer from the kind of tone deafness that is generally associated with actual deafness

The pleasure of remembering had been taken from me, because there was no longer anyone to remember with. It felt like losing your co-rememberer meant losing the memory itself, as if the things we'd done were less real and important than they had been hours before.

This fear bears no analogy to any fear I knew before. This is the basest of all possible emotions, the feeling that was with us before we existed, before this building existed, before the earth existed. This is the fear that made fish crawl out onto dry land and evolve lungs, the fear that teaches us to run, the fear that makes us bury our dead.