“I could stay with Mears-Starbuck for forty-seven years, I thought. I could live with a crazy girlfriend, get my left ear sliced off and maybe inherit Ferris' job when he retired.”

“I had originally thought that a job at Starbucks might be below my abilities. But now i realized it might be beyond them. This job could be a areal challenge for me - mentally, emotionally, and physically.”

“I held up my hands. 'I thought you could use a punching bag.' See, this is me, the new and improved Nick Pardee, available to girlfriends and crazy people in their time of need.”

“Dude, could you please get off my girlfriend before I beat the crap out of you ? I don't want to injure her.”

“If I could tell you only one thing about my life it would be this: when I was seven years old the mailman ran over my head.”

“I walked into a bakery seven years later and there he was. He had dogs at his feet and a bird in a cage beside him. The seven years were not seven years. They were not seven hundred years. Their length could not be measured in years, just as an ocean could not explain the distance we had traveled, just as the dead can never be counted. I wanted to run away from him, and I wanted to go right up to him.”