“Thwart: to prevent someone from accomplishing something by means of visiting gratuitous violence upon his smarmy person.”

“Thwart," I said. "To prevent someone from accomplishing something by means of visiting gratuitous violence upon his smarmy person.""I'm pretty sure that isn't the definition." Sarissa said."It is today.”

“I'm going to use them to track him down and thwart him." "Thwart?" Sarissa asked."Thwart." I said. "To prevent someone from accomplishing something by means of visiting gratuitous violence upon his smarmy person.""I'm pretty sure that isn't the definition," Sarissa said."It is today.”

“Thomas looked like someone's painting of the forgotten Greek god of body cologne. He had long hair so dark that light itself could not escape it, and even fresh from the shower it was starting to curl. His eyes were the color of thunderclouds, and he never did a single moment of exercise to earn the gratuitous amount of ripple in his musculature. He was wearing jeans and no shirt--his standard household uniform. I once saw him answer the door to speak to a female missionary in the same outfit, and she'd assaulted him in a cloud of forgotten copies of The Watchtower. The tooth marks she left had been interesting.”

“I mean it," I said. "You're in danger.""Relax, Harry. I'm not letting anyone lick me, and I'm not looking anyone in the eyes. It's kind of like visiting New York.”

“Nearly everyone underestimates how powerful the touch of another person's hand can be. The need to be touched is something so primal, so fundamentally a part of our existence as human beings that its true impact upon us can be difficult to put into words. That power doesn't necessarily have anything to do with sex, either. From the time we are infants, we learn to associate the touch of a human hand with safety, with comfort, with love.”

“If you can't stop the bad thoughts from coming to visit, at least you can make fun of them while they're hanging around.”