“I was like a clock that had exploded- my springs were hanging out, my hands were cockeyed, and my numbers were falling off.”

“I kept the fingers of my left hand crossed all the time, while on my right-hand fingers I counted anything at all—steps to the refrigerator, seconds on the clock, words in a sentence—to keep my head occupied. The counting felt like something to hang on to, as if finding the right numbers might somehow crack the code on whatever system ran the slippery universe we were moving through.”

“I had no weapons. No plan. Nothing but my blood and my hands. They were coming, and there were more of them than I'd realized.”

“I realized my hands were in my pockets. He couldn't hold one even if he wanted to. Not unless he actively dug it out, which would be weird. He probably thought I was sending him a specific message not to hold my hand.I took my hands out of my pockets.The problem is I like having my hands in my pockets. It's my natural position. They felt unwieldy hanging by my sides, as if I was walking like a Neanderthal. Why was I so bad at this?”

“I could have been hanging out with my friends, but most of them were hanging out with their families or their Wiis. (Wiis? Wiii? What is the plural?)”

“I rose to standing, like Lars upon the barbican, the dark city spread at my feet. Lights twinkled in tavern windows, bobbed at the Wolfstoot Bridge construction. Once I had been suspended over this vast space, hanging and helpless, at a dragon’s mercy. Once I had feared that telling the truth would be like falling, that love would be like hitting the ground, but here I was, my feet firmly planted, standing on my own. We were all monsters and bastards, and we were all beautiful.”