"Always watch where you are going. Otherwise, you may step on a piece of the Forest that was left out by mistake."

"I'm not a vegetarian! I'm a dessertarian!"

"Cheaters never prosper. (Because they suck.)"

"I'd never met coffee that wasn't wonderful. It was just a matter of how wonderful it was."

"Selfish, adj. Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others."

"Who knew hitting my head and passing out would be so much fun?"

"With the world securely in order, Dain was able to devote the leisurely bath time to editing his mental dictionary. He removed his wife from the general category labeled "Females" and gave her a section of her own. He made a note that she didn't find him revolting, and proposed several explanations: (a) bad eyesight and faulty hearing, (b)a defect in a portion of her otherwise sound intellect, (c) an inherited Trent eccentricity, or (d) an act of God. Since the Almighty had not done him a single act of kindness in at least twenty-five years, Dain thought it was about bloody time, but he thanked his Heavenly Father all the same, and promised to be as good as he was capable of being."

"I am ever a gentle maiden," she shouted. "Damn if I'm not."

"As we all know, blinking lights means science."

"I didn't know you had a girlfriend, Griggs." Anson Choi feigns surprise. "What's her name?""I didn't actually catch her name," Griggs continues."Lily," Raffaela says over her shoulder and this time I give her a sideways look."Great to know that I'm in love with a girl with a cool name.""It's Taylor's middle name," Raffaela calls back again."

"When forced to leave my house for an extended period of time, I take my typewriter with me, and together we endure the wretchedness of passing through the X-ray scanner. The laptops roll merrily down the belt, while I’m instructed to stand aside and open my bag. To me it seems like a normal enough thing to be carrying, but the typewriter’s declining popularity arouses suspicion and I wind up eliciting the sort of reaction one might expect when traveling with a cannon.It’s a typewriter,’ I say. ‘You use it to write angry letters to airport security."

"Talking with you is sort of the conversational equivalent of an out of body experience."

"Izzy, are you—” he began. His eyes flew wide, and he backed up fast enough to smack his head into the wall behind him. “What is he doing here?”Isabelle tugged her tank top back down and glared at her brother. “You don’t knock now?”“It—It’s my bedroom!” Alec spluttered. He seemed to be deliberately trying not to look at Izzy and Simon, who were indeed in a very compromising position. Simon rolled quickly off Isabelle, who sat up, brushing herself off as if for lint. Simon sat up more slowly, trying to hold the torn edges of his shirt together. “Why are all my clothes on the floor?” Alec said.“I was trying to find something for Simon to wear,” Isabelle explained. “Maureen put him in leather pants and a puffy shirt because he was being her romance-novel slave.”“He was being her what?”“Her romance-novel slave,” Isabelle repeated, as if Alec were being particularly dense.Alec shook his head as if he were having a bad dream. “You know what? Don’t explain. Just—put your clothes on, both of you."

"I had learned that you should always shout louder than your aggressor."

"How can you protect yourself by carrying a sword if you don’t know how to use it?’Not me, sir. Other people. They see the sword and don’t attack me,’ said Maladict patiently.Yes, but if they did, lad, you wouldn’t be any good with it,’ said the sergeant.No, sir. I’d probably settle for just ripping their heads off, sir. That’s what I mean by protection, sir. Theirs, not mine. And I’d get hell from the League if I did that, sir."

"Nozy Cat lifted one sleepy eyelid, and his marble blue eye glared at her for interrupting his sacred nap. He wore a yellow collar with little red stars printed on it. His second eyelid also opened, and he gave them his irritated blue-eyed glare."

"Darwin says people like you need to die.” (Carrow)"

"Computers are like Old Testament gods"

"Mysteries force a man to think, and so injure his health."

"In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language."

"Fortunately, we did most of our athletic stuff inside, so we didn't have to jog through Tribeca looking like a bunch of boot-camp hippie children."

"In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office."