Tim Tharp

“They've drummed the miraculous out of you, but you don't want it to be like that. You want the miraculous. You want everything to still be new.”

“Life is spectacular. Forget the dark things. Take a drink and let time wash them away to where ever time washes away to.”

“Maybe Marcus was wrong. Maybe a single person can save the world. I'll bet I could. I could save the whole world - for a night.”

“See, I do have a future to give her after all, just not one that includes me.”

“She's drenched and bedraggled, but I've never loved anyone as much as I love her right now. That's how I know I'll have to give her up.”

“Finally, she's like, "I know it looks bad right now, but parents are just people. They don't always know what to do. That doesn't mean they don't love you.”

“She's different from the girls I'm used to dating. She doesn't get tired of my stories and jokes or expect me to start reading her mind. She doesn't want me to dress better or put highlights in my hair or serious up. I'm not a lifestyle accessory to her. I'm a necessity. I'm the guy that's going to crack open her cocoon. She doesn't need to change me - she needs me to change her. At least until her little butterfly wings get strong enough to fly away.”

“I don't believe in that - the husband and wife having to be just alike. I think it's better if they kind of offset each other. Like if they have these different dimensions they can bring to each other.”

“Sometimes my tact takes a vacation. Tonight it must've gone to Kuwait or somewhere.”

“Nothing lasts," she says, and there's a little crack in her voice. "You think it's going to. You think, 'Here's something I can hold on to,' but it always slips away.”

“You know how when you see someone day in, day out, year after year, you don't really notice him getting taller or wider or older or whatever? It can be like that with the way people are on the inside too.”

“Besides, it doesn't matter if it's real. It never does with dreams. They aren't anything anyway but lifesavers to cling to so you don't drown. Life is an ocean, and most everyone's hanging on to some kind of dream to keep afloat.”

“That type of dream just kind of wears out with time like a favorite old T-shirt. One day, it's nothing but tatters and all you can do is throw it over on the rag pile with the others.”

“You're nothing but a product. And what's this product called? Emptiness, dude, that's what it's called. And for the rest of your life, they sell you over and over, right to the end when they package you one last time and plant you in the ground.”

“It's superb to be out in the early, early morning before the sun comes up. There's this sense of being super-alive. You're in on a secret that all the dull, sleeping people don't know about. Unlike them, you're alert and aware of existing right here in this precise moment between what happened and what's going to happen.”

“Childhood was a fantastic country to live in.”

“You think, 'Here's something I can hold on to,' but it always slips away.”

“We’re not the Faster-than-the-Speed-of-Light Generation anymore. We’re not even the Next-New-Thing Generation. We’re the Soon-to-Be-Obsolete Kids, and we’ve crowded in here to hide from the future and the past. We know what’s up – the future looms straight ahead like a black wrought-iron gate and the past is charging after us like a badass Doberman, only this one doesn’t have any letup in him.”

“That's how it is with legends. The greater they sound, the more must've got left out.”

“I did it! I stopped time.[Hampton Green]”

“This looks interesting," I say, but what I'm really thinking is, Wow, Aimee, science fiction? Really, could you try any harder to brand yourself with the mark of the nerd herd? What's next, anime?”

“Books seem a little old-fashioned, but hey, I can do old-fashioned if it's good.”

“It's more like I was daydreaming when the Supreme Being told me what I should do with my life, and it's too late to ask what it was.”

“She might be the only girl I've ever met who still hasn't learned to sacrifice bodily comfort for fashion's sake.”

“The thought does cross my mind that I could slip and end up cracking my head on the pavement just short of the pool, but if you're always going to worry about minor drawbacks, then you'll never accomplish anything.”