“Colin thought about the dork mantra: sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. What a dirty lie.”

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will always hurt me.”

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.' Yeah, well, whoever wrote that was a friggin' idiot.”

“Stick and stones may break your bones, but words will never hurt you.”

“It was not the way Curve smelled that Colin liked - not exactly. It was the way the air smelled just as Lindsey began to jog away from him. The smell of perfume left behind. There's not a word for that in English, but Colin knew the French word: sillage. What Colin liked about Curve was not its smell on the skin but its sillage, the fruity sweet smell of its leaving.”

“In the first century CE, Roman authorities punished St. Apollonia by crushing her teeth one by one with pliers. Colin often thought about this in relationship to the monotony of dumping: we have thirty-two teeth. After a while, having each tooth individually destroyed probably gets repetitive, even dull. But it never stops hurting.”