“You can't drive them around in the getaway van.' 'How about we don't call it the getaway van? People might get suspicious.' 'So what should we call it?' 'How about the van?' 'It doesn't change what it is and that it's a shitty thing to do. Someone might see them in it.”
“I never said there wasn't anything to worry about. Just that I'd handle the situation. Take a deep breath, stop calling, and don't get involved. I'm full up on crazy family members at the moment.~Grayson van Court to Cassandra van Court”
“Van, Van, we’re only simple, fallible mortals - we aren’t saints, we aren’t angels - we fall on our faces and make errors and sometimes people die of them - sometimes people we love dearly -”
“What our closest friends do for us is to teach us true selflessness. We learn that while it might be safer for them if we keep them out, true friendship means letting them in. We cannot decide for them what they are willing to suffer with us and for us. While we certainly don't want to see our friends suffer, friendship isn't about protecting each other from pain so much as it is about helping each other to become what God has called us to be.”
“How do you know all this?""Well I don't know what you people from Colorado call it, but around here we call it American History and it's mandatory for all juniors.”
“Calling something exotic emphasizes its distance from the reader. We don’t refer to things as exotic if we think of them as ordinary. We call something exotic if it’s so different that we see no way to emulate it or understand how it came to be. We call someone exotic if we aren’t especially interested in viewing them as people — just as objects representing their culture.”