“When it comes to girls (and in Colin's case, it so often did), everyone has a type. Colin Singleton's type was not physical but linguistic: he liked Katherines. And not Katies or Kats or Kitties or Cathys or Rynns or Trinas or Kays or Kates or, god forbid, Catherines. K-A-T-H-E-R-I-N-E. He had dated 19 girls. All of them had been named Katherine. And all of them- every single solitary one- had dumped him.”

“Architecture is a hazardous mixture of omnipotence and impotence. It is by definition a c h a o t i c a d v e n t u r e... In other words, the utopian enterprise.”

“Oh, I love period dramas, especially period dramas starring Colin Firth. I'm like Bridget Jones if she were actually fat.""Oh... Colin Firth. He should only do period dramas. And period dramas should only star Colin Firth. (One-star upgrade for Colin Firth. Two stars for Colin Firth in a waistcoat.)"Keep typing his name, even his name is handsome.”

“Col, Here's to all the places we went. And all the places we'll go And here's me, whispering again and again and again and again: iloveyou. yrs forever, K-a-t-h-e-r-i-n-e Eventually, he found the bed too comfortable for his state of mind, so he lay down on his back, his legs sprawled across the carpet. He anagrammed "yrs forever" until he found one he liked: sorry fever. And then he lay there in his fever of sorry and repeated the now memorized note in his head and wanted to cry, but instead he only felt this aching behind his solar plexus. Crying adds something: crying is you, plus tears. But the feeling Colin had was some horrible opposite of crying. It was you, minus somthing. He kept thinking about one word -forever-and felt the burning ache just beneath his rib cage. It hurt like the worst ass-kicking- he'd ever gotten. And he'd gotten plenty." 1.Greek: "I have found it." 2.More on that later.”

“S-A-T-O-RA-R-E-P-O T-E-N-E-T O-P-E-R-A R-O-T-A-SThe palindrome means something like “The farmer Arepo works with his plow,” with rotas, literally “wheels,” referring to the back-and-forth motion that plows make as they till. This “magic square” has delighted enigmatologists for centuries ... The magic square also reportedly kept away the devil, who traditionally (so said the church) got confused when he read palindromes.”

“I will have that, Colin thought. I will have it. I will. With Katherine. But I won't be only that, he resolved. I will leave behind something more that one photo album where I always look old.”