“Yeah, Pudge is adorable / but you want incorrigible / so Jake is more endurable / 'cause he's so - damn. Damn. I almost had four rhymes on adorable. But all I could think of was unfloorable, which isn't even a word." - Takumi”

“I think she and I were talking about how much I adored skateboarding on the computer but how it would never even occur to me to try and step on a skateboard in real life, and then she said, 'Let's play Truth or Dare' and then you fucked her." "Wait, you fucked her? In front of the Colonel?" Takumi cried. "I didn't fuck her.”

“It's all very dramatic and everything, but so what? I didn't know the guy. People I don't know die all the damned time.”

“He—that's Simon Bolivar—was shaken by the overwhelming revelation that the headlong race between his misfortunes and his dreams was at that moment reaching the finish line. The rest was darkness. Damn it," he sighed. "'How will I ever get out of this labyrinth!'"So what's the labyrinth?" I asked her."That's the mystery, isn't it? Is the labyrinth living or dying? Which is he trying to escape—the world or the end of it?”

“More than anything, I felt the unfairness of it, the inarguable injustice of loving someonewho might have loved you back but can't due to deadness, and then I leaned forward, my forehead against the back of Takumi's headrest, and Icried, whimpering, and I didn't even feel sadness so much as pain.”

“I hope you didn't bring the Asian kid along thinking he's a computer genius. Because I'm not," Takumi said.”

“I'm Chip Martin," he announced in a deep voice, the voice of a radio deejay. Before I could respond, he added, "I'd shake your hand, but I think you should hold on damn tight to that towel till you can get some clothes on.”