“Lip was in his element. Him and his languages. His linguistic abilities didn’t just stop at Pig Latin, like the rest of us. He was also pretty savvy with the computer kind. Pascal, Basic, JavaScript, those were child’s play to him. He knew the completely worthless programming languages, as well. Like IronPython, IPTSCRAE, TenCore, SystemVerilog; some of the names were so ridiculous they sounded like Klingon gibberish: “Metalua, KUKA, Nemerle…” Because you never knew when you’d need to communicate with a toaster.”

“Johnny Two-cakes. As a name it didn’t quite fit him, but for some reason that’s what he was called. Man was sour and dour. All business; doom and gloom to the extent it was actually funny. World was coming to an end. US was one tick away from becoming a third-world country’s bitch. Everything was a crisis—including the fact someone had stolen his tuna sandwich.”

“​He sighed. “I don’t remember it dying. It’s one of those things that just goes—like a storm—when does it stop raining?” Douglas flicked his hands and sniffed, staring back at Mrs. King. “I just realized I didn’t need an umbrella anymore.”

“I suppose you heard him yelling as the doctor set his leg.""I never knew there were so many rude words in the English language. Or French, German, Italian, Latin,or....there was another language I didn't quite recognize.""Greek.”

“He smiled at my reaction, the stupid smile of his that was like he knew something you didn’t. And he knew something I didn’t pretty much all the time, so it was pretty much every smile on his face.”

“He had a smug smile on his lips like he knew, even in his sleep, that women all around him were dying from love because he'd taken their hearts and hidden them where they'd never find them.”

“Laurel watched his lips intently as he spoke. He thought it was pretty amazing that she knew what he was saying just from reading his lips. But it also meant a lot of times her eyes were on his mouth, not meeting his gaze. Which gave him the sneaky ability to watch her more closely than he could anyone else, without her thinking he was staring.”