“I do what I've trained my whole life to do. I watch the ball. I keep my eye on the ball. I never stop watching.I watch it as it sails past me and lands in the catcher's mitt, a perfect and glorious strike three.”

“[...] Lilith turned on me with the same fury I had watched her unleash on that fat bastard on the TV and I seriously feared for my balls.”

“Self-consciousness, that's what it is. Always my abiding vice. I keep seeing myself. Me watching myself watching others watch me. How do you lose that? What's the trick?”

“Yeah,bumpers are for preschoolers or two teenagers who couldn't stop throwing gutter balls if their lives depended on it.Which, fortunately, they don't.Because we'd be screwed."I grabbed my glittery hot pink ball (which I was seriously considering buying) and imitated the perfect form a Mohawked guy next to us was using. Instead of shooting straight down the lane and knocking over all the pins, my ball inexplicably went flying backward toward Lend."Okay,now we're getting dangerous." Lend brought my ball back and, wrapping himself around me,we threw it together. After pinballing off the bumpers on both sides,it knocked down a whole three pins.I jumped up and down, screaming. "That's like, practically a strike,right?""Good enough for me!”

“What happened?" I ask. My heart hurts."That big guy," he says. His voice is high and tight. "Number forty-six. Jeez, he just bashed his shoulder right into my chest, and when I was on the ground, he steps on my leg with his cleat." He sniffs hard, rubs his nose on his sleeve, doesn't meet my eyes."That bastard," I say. "The minute he gets off the field I'm going to kick him in the balls." Oliver laughs a little, his eyes filling up at the same time. "He'll never know what hit him. His balls are gonna go flying, I promise you that. People will wish they brought their catcher's mitts.”

“To regret the past, to hope in the future, and never to be satisfied with the present: that is what I spend my whole life doing”