“Right. I'd forgotten about her.' He shook his head. 'That keeps happening.”

“Pudge," She shook her head and sipped the cold coffee and wine-"Pudge, what you must understand about me is that I am a deeply unhappy person.”

“He shook his head, just looking at me."What?" I asked."Nothing," he said."Why are you looking at me like that?"Augustus half smiled. "Because you're beautiful. I enjoy looking at beautiful people, and I decided a while ago not to deny myself the simpler pleasures of existence.”

“You and me will read a book and find three interesting things that we remember. But Colin finds everything intriguing. He reads a book about presidents and he remembers more of it because everything he reads clicks in his head as fugging interesting.”

“I nudged my head into his shoulder. "Thanks for offering to come over.""you realize that trying to keep your distance from me will not lessen my affection for you," he said."i guess?" i said."all efforts to save me from you will fail," he said.”

“Well," Peter Van Houten said, extending his hand to me. "It is at any rate a pleasure to meet such ontologically improbable creatures." I shook his swollen hand, and then he shook hands with Augustus. I was wondering what ontologically meant. Regardless, I liked it. Augustus and I were together in the Improbable Creatures Club: us and duck-billed platypuses.”

“Right, well, he'd been sick for a while and his nurse said to him, 'You seem to be feeling better this morning,' and Isben looked at her and said, 'On the contrary,' and then he died.”