The punch connected, but (1) Colin forgot to close his fist, so he was slapping not hitting, and (2) instead of slapping TOC, he ended up slapping Hassan flush across the cheek, whereupon Hassan finally succeeded in falling down.

It is not my fault that my parents own the world's largest collection of black Santas.

It is easy to forget how full the world is of people, full to bursting, and each of them imaginable and consistently misimagined.

Books—they weren't ladders out of the abyss, but they were companions.

I wondered whether I could find a Great Perhaps here at all or whether I had made a grand miscalculation.

He took a bite, swallowed. "God. If asparagus tasted like that all the time, I'd be vegetarian, too." Some people in a lacquered wooden boat approached us on the canal below. One of them, a woman with curly blond hair, maybe thirty, drank from a beer then raised her glass towards us and shouted something. "We don't speak Dutch," Gus shouted back. One of the others shouted a translation: "The beautiful couple is beautiful.

I'm interested in Internet cultures. I'm interested in what the teenagers who drive the Internet culture are passionate about. I follow their lead - they go to tumblr, I go to tumblr.