“He looked like a man who was turning into paper, folding himself into origami angles, fragile and friable and prone to crumple.”

“So close now, Alec could read the make on his wetsuit, see the individual grains of sand that dustedthe black material, the drops of water trembling on the points of his hair. Now or never. But Alec couldn‟t,couldn’t. Could he?He stood up. “Stop!” His mouth dried out as the surfer‟s dark, dark green eyes looked into his, startledand curious. Suddenly he felt an absolute fool. He was inviting a good kicking, at least. But damn it, a mancouldn‟t always be afraid.“Don‟t go past. Please. Sit down and drink with me. If you go past… If you go past, I think I‟ll die.”

“Will, you look like hell!" I yelled through the glass door."I can't say how you look," he said. "But if you look like you sound, you look like a jerk. Please help me.”

“In a world turned upside-down, where everything was wrong, bizarre, you could at least look up at the sky and see normality. Stars that shone regardless of who won a civil war, or who should or should not be a president. Their light was billions of years old. They didn't have a care...”

“Beside me, Philippe and Meg hold hands. He murmurs something that sounds like, "my dear leetle mongoose." I wish he'd turn back into a frog and hop away.”

“He bursts into tears, and not some manlike tears either, where you pretend you're brushing something off your face and, incidentally, wipe a tear. Nope. He starts bawling like a kid who spilled his Slushie...”

“You ever hear that expression 'If it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck'?”