“Look at that," he said. "How the ink bleeds." He loved the way it looked, to write on a thick pillow of the pad, the way the thicker width of paper underneath was softer and allowed for a more cushiony interface between pen and surface, which meant more time the two would be in contact for any given point, allowing the fiber of the paper to pull, through capillary action, more ink from the pen, more ink, which meant more evenness of ink, a thicker, more even line, a line with character, with solidity. The pad, all those ninety-nine sheets underneath him, the hundred, the even number, ten to the second power, the exponent, the clean block of planes, the space-time, really, represented by that pad, all of the possible drawings, graphs, curves, relationships, all of the answers, questions, mysteries, all of the problems solvable in that space, in those sheets, in those squares.”

“I have always had more dread of a pen, a bottle of ink, and a sheet of paper than of a sword or pistol.”

“My father built a time machine and then he spent his whole life trying to figure out how to use it to get more time. He spent all the time he had with us thinking about how he wished he had more time, if he could only have more time.”

“My father makes to-do lists, makes plans, makes business plans. This is how he starts, always with a blank sheet of graph paper.”

“I was headed for an entire life spent alone, pitying myself for not being more, ignoring all those people who actually ask me to be more, because they see it in me.”

“There is more empty space in the book you're holding, than book. The electrons in the atoms of the book are moving so fast, they give the illusion of solid ink on solid paper. It's not. It's just an illusion. If all the electrons would stop moving for even an instant, the book would not just crumble into dust, it would disappear. Poof”

“It was almost reckless how vulnerable she allowed herself to be; you couldn't help but hate her for doing that to herself, and at the same time hate yourself for giving in to it, and underneath all of that, despite your hate for her, couldn't help but love her.”