“Why did I have to be a good boy just because I had a bad-boy brother? I hated the way my mom and dad did family math.”

“I did not grow up in poverty. But I did grow up with a poor boy's sense of longing, in my case not for what my family had never had, but for what we had had and lost.”

“I'm skipping, but Cam doesn't have a class until this afternoon, so he's a good boy.""And your a bad boy?""Oh, I'm a bad, bad boy.""Yeah, as in bad at spelling, math, english, cleaning up after yourself, talking to people, and I could go on.”

“Brother dear,” I said, “did your soul leave your body while Amos was talking, or did you actually hear him? Egyptian gods real. Red Lord bad. Red Lord’s birthday: very soon, very bad. House of Life: fussy magicians who hate our family because dad was a bit of a rebel, whom you could take a lesson from. Which leaves us—just us—with Dad missing, an evil god about to destroy the world, and an uncle who just jumped off the building—and I can’t actually blame him.” I took a breath. [Yes, Carter, I do have to breathe occasionally.]”

“There is a little boy inside the man who is my brother... Oh, how I hated that little boy. And how I love him too.”

“It's becoming apparent that I like bad boys. That's one of my problems. They've all been bad boys. You're one too. You're a bad boy. But, I think you're a good bad boy.”