“She’ll probably have all the work made up and a dozen stories written for The Oracle before I finish that one stupid book report on Moby Dick. I mean, Todd, who really cares about whales?'Todd did, but he let the comment slide by.”

“Who will remember Todd?Who will remember what he did?Todd -Todd -And my heart breaks even more -Breaks forever -And I fall to my knees in the snow and sand -And I yell out, wordless and empty -And I drop the weapon.”

“Now, I want you to look at each other. Really look. And then I'd like you to each say something positive about the other person." "Now Todd, you go first."Todd eye balled me up and down."She appears to have all her teeth"."OOh, good one,Todd," I cooed,then turned to maggie and smiled sweetly. " And Todd smells very little like a pile of goat crap.”

“Not to me," I said.Kafka wrote his first story in one night. Stendhal wrote TheCharterhouse of Parma in forty-nine days. Melville wrote Moby-Dick in sixteen months. Flaubert spent five years on MadameBovary. Musil worked for eighteen years on The Man WithoutQualities and died before he could finish. Do we care about anyof that now?”

“Renee: "You know what I did when I finished Moby Dick?"David: "You harpooned the guy that sold you the book?”

“You mean old books?""Stories written before space travel but about space travel.""How could there have been stories about space travel before --""The writers," Pris said, "made it up.”