“Nah,' I tell her after a while. 'He is more like a brother, you know?'The good kind. The kind with the purple teeth.”

“What's love? Something that lasts a week or a month and that's all you can except? Or is it just that some loves have a short shelf life? You know, like yogurt: after a week or two they go bad.And how do you recognize the other kind of love, the kind that isn't like yogurt? The kind that's more like... I don't know, like peanut butter, that lasts forever and always tastes good?”

“I wouldn't say hate, exactly. You're kind of like fungus, Gwen. After a while, you just start growing on people.”

“I never said I was good,” he told her, taking the pen. “Just that I liked doing it.”“That’s the best kind of good.”

“Well, it seems to me that there are books that tell stories, and then there are books that tell truths... The first kind, they show you life like you want it to be. With villains getting what they deserve and the hero seeing what a fool he's been and marrying the heroine and happy endings and all that... But the second kind, they show you life more like it is... The first kind makes you cheerful and contented, but the second kind shakes you up.”

“The more words, the more vanity, and what is man the better? For who knows what is good for man while he lives the few days of his vain life, which he passes like a shadow? For who can tell a man what shall be after him under the sun?”