“Just so you know, when they say "Once upona time” . . . they’re lying”

“Just so you know," I begin, "when they say 'Once upon a time'... they're lying. It's not once upon a time. It's not even twice upon a time. It's hundreds of times, over and over, every time someone opens up the pages of this dusty old book.”

“They’re a-”“-band,” Patrick finished. “I know.”“They’re not just a band,” Orestes said with reverence, his fingers flying over the keyboard.“They’re the modern voice of the collective human conscience.”“Tell that to Tipper Gore.”“Who?”Patrick laughed. “She was before your time, I guess.”“What did you used to listen to when you were a kid?”“The cavemen, banging rocks together,” Patrick said dryly”

“Just so you know: if this ever happens to you, you will not be ready.”

“It is so strange, to encounter an ex. It's as if you're in a foreign film, and what you're saying face-to-face has nothing to do with the subtitles flowing beneath you. We are so careful not to touch, although once upon a time, I slept plastered to him in our bed, like lichen on a rock. We are two strangers who knows every shameful secret, every hidden freckle, every fatal flaw in each other.”

“You’re lying,” he said-not angry, not accusing. Just as ifhe was stating the facts, in a way that she wasn’t.“I am not-”“You can say it a million times, but that doesn’t make it any more true.” Peter smiled then, soguileless that Lacy felt it smart like a stripe from a whip. “You might be able to fool Dad, and thecops, and anyone else who’ll listen,” he said. “You just can’t fool another liar.”

“People always say that, when you love someone, nothing in the world matters. But that's not true, is it? You know, and I know, that when you love someone, everything in the world matters a little bit more.”