"Millard! Who's the prime minister?""Winston Churchill," he said. "Have you gone daft?""What's the capital of Burma?""Lord, I've no idea. Rangoon?""Good! When's your birthday?""Will you quit shouting and let me bleed in peace!"
"I love you too, I wanted to say with as much hurtful sarcasm as I could muster, but she hadn't seen me, and I kept quiet. I did love her, of course, but mostly just because loving your mother is mandatory, not because she's someone I think I'd like very much if I met her walking down the street. Which she wouldn't be anyway; walking is for poor people"
"No one here is embarrassed of their gift."
"Have they built cities on the moon?" another boy asked hopefully."We left some garbage and a flag there in the sixties, but thats about it."
"You Sure this is it?" I said. "It looks empty.""Empty? No way, there's loads of shit in there," worm replied"
"Will you quit shouting and let me bleed in peace!"
"That was our friendship: equal parts irritation and cooperation."
"..he had trampled her poor, pining heart, and the wound was still raw, even these many years later."
"But these weren't the kind of monsters that had tentacles and rotting skin, the kind a seven-year-old might be able to wrap his mind around--they were monsters with human faces, in crisp uniforms, marching in lockstep, so banal you don't recognize them for what they are until it's too late."
"I used to dream about escaping my ordinary life, but my life was never ordinary. I had simply failed to notice how extraordinary it was. Likewise, I never imagined that home might be something I would miss."
"It's easy to say you don't care about money when you have plenty of it."
"It seemed like my parents were always trying to get me to care about money, but I didn’t, really. Then again, it's easy to say you don't care about money when you have plenty of it."
"They may love you', she whispered, 'but they'll never understand."
"Males lack the seriousness of temperament required of persons with such great responsibilities."
"One of the peculiar children's perspective out of time allows him to take minute interest in every resident of the town and to chronicle everything we did for the entire day he lives over and over."
"Though I imagine we're killing ourselves right now in all manner of ways that'll seem insane to people in the future. And as doors to the next world go, a bog ain't a bad choice. It's not quite water and it's not quite land - it's an in-between place."
"I was quite possibly in the midst of losing my mind. I needed to get away from people until I figured out if I actually was losing my mind."
"I cried harder. I didn't want to, but I couldn't stop myself.I couldn't stop myself, so I thought about all the bad things and I fed it and fed it until I was crying so hard I had to gasp for breath between sobs."
"They worried that fantasies were somehow inoculating me against more practical realities."
"To have endured horrors, to have seen the worst of humanity and have your life made unrecognizable by it, to come out of all that honorable and brave— that was magical."
"Stars, too, were time travelers. How many of those ancient points of light were the last echoes of suns now dead? If all the suns but ours collapsed tonight, how many lifetimes would it take us to realize we were alone?"
"Stars, too, were time travelers. How many of those ancient points of light were the last echoes of suns now dead? How many had been born but their light not yet come this far? If all the suns but ours collapsed tonight, how many lifetimes would it take us to realize we were alone? I had always known the sky was full of mysteries—but not until now had I realized how full of them the earth was."
"An air of mystery closed around the details of his early life. I didn't pry. He had been through hell and had a right to his secrets."
"Right at the flamingo orgy! Left at the multiethnic roof Santas! Straight past the pissing cherubs!"
"I knew there was something peculiar about you," she said. "And I mean that as the highest compliment." I'd always known I was strange. I never dreamed I was peculiar."