He rose to his feet in one fluid move, the better to look down at me. “You don’t know me, princess. Some people have reasons for doing things, and don’t just go wherever they’re told or drift whichever way they’re pushed.

I was generally pro-bat, except when I was trekking through the dark trying not to think about the dire fate of every horror movie character stupid enough to go into the dark with a flashlight and check the fuses.

Good writing is good writing. In many ways, it’s the audience and their expectations that define a genre. A reader of literary fiction expects the writing to illuminate the human condition, some aspect of our world and our role in it. A reader of genre fiction likes that, too, as long as it doesn’t get in the way of the story.

When your family is twice as weird as normal, you have to be twice as polite to authority, because authority hates weird.

How about this?" I said, because now it was the principle of the thing. "I'm sorry, jackass.

Emery cut in impatiantly, "For crying out loud. Who do you think you are, Nancy Drew?" Hey," I snapped, because no one sniped at my sister but me, and Mark echoed with a stern "Chill, dude." Phin was unperturbed. "Those books were highly unrealistic. Do you have any idea how much brain damage a person would have if she were hit on the head and drugged with chloroform that often?

I was the designated grown up in a family that operated in different reality than the rest of the world.