The kiss lasted forever as Otto Frank kept talking from behind me. "And my conclusion is," he said, "since I had been in very good terms with Anne, that most parents don't know really their children.

I'm sitting her thinking, -God, I swear I will take a vow of silence and move to a monastery and worship you for all my days if you just this once provide me with an invisibility cloak, come on, come on, please please invisibility cloak now now now-. It's very possible that Jane is thinking the same thing, I have no idea, because she's not talking either, and I can't look at her on account of how I'm blinded by embarrassment.

Radar revs the engine as to say hustle, and we are running through the parking lot, Ben's robe flowing in the wind so that he looks vaguely like a dark wizard, except that his pale skinny legs are visible, and his arms hug plastic bags. I can see the back of Lacey's legs beneath her dress, her calves tight in midstride. I don't know how I look, but I know how I feel: Young. Goofy. Infinite.

I like to build places online where readers can have productive conversations about books.

I liked that he was a tenured professor in the Department of Slightly Crooked Smiles with a dual appointments in the Department of Having a Voice that Made My Skin Feel More Like Skin.

What's the point in being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? How very odd, to believe God gave you life, and yet not think that life asks more of you than watching TV.

So it’s your death suit.” “Correct. Don’t you have a death outfit?” “Yeah,” I said. “It’s a dress I bought for my fifteenth birthday party. But I don’t wear it on dates.” His eyes lit up. “We’re on a date?” he asked. I looked down, feeling bashful. “Don’t push it.