“Look, Aerin, preparation is only half the challenge of winning a debate.”“And the other half?”He had her now. “You have to choose the right side.”“Your side, you mean.” She bristled.“No, the losing side.”“What?”“Always choose the weaker side.”“Why would I do that?” Doubt edged her voice, but now she was sitting erect, her feet flat on the floor.“Because then you have further to go to prove your case.” He eased the feet of his chair down. “In a debate, there are two sides. If both make a good argument, then the less popular side wins because that side had further to go to prove its point. Simple logistics.”“If you don’t care which side wins.” She frowned.“It’s a debate. It doesn’t matter which side wins.”“You mean it doesn’t matter to you.” The tone in her voice unsettled him. Or maybe it was the fact that that her criticism disturbed him at all.“It’s a class,” he said. “The point is to flesh out the different sides of an argument.”“And you don’t care if the truth gets lost in the shuffle. Don’t you believe in anything?!”

“He said that seeing and understanding are two different things. Our eyes show us one side of an object, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t five other sides we can’t see. So why thrust your eyes? Why live your whole life thinking that just because you can’t see every side to something, those other sides don’t exist?”

“No matter what side of the argument you are on, you always find people on your side that you wish were on the other.”

“How many times have you been slapped on dates?”“Five,” he said as he checked over his shoulder and eased back out into traffic. “So hit my left side if you’re going to. The right’s my pretty side.”“Which side is your modest side?”“Don’t have one.”

“It’s easy K. on one side of the page you got your costs and on the other side your benefits. All you do is mark which one is which, then you weigh one side against the other and you get your decision just like that. that’s all you ever have to do. i live by this.”"But what if you don’t know the difference between a benefit and a cost? what if you’ve never been very good at telling a plus from a minus?”

“Sophie, displaced to the chair next to Lulu, dug her in the side. "Keep him," she whispered. "Nail his foot to the floor if you have to. He's gold.”