“I'm sorry. My dad is dead too. Now climb, young grasshopper, so your kung fu won't be weak.”

“Now climb, young grasshopper, so your Kung Fu won't be weak.”

“Men don't ask other men if they're getting home OK, they just assume that beneath the frail, weak exterior lurks a muscle-building kung fu master fearless of ever being mugged.”

“I told them what I had discovered about Nabokov's sentences: Because the word string and the thoughts behind the words are so original, the reader's brain can't jump ahead. There is no opportunity to make assumptions, no mental leapfrogging to the end of the sentence. So the reader is suspended in the perfect moment of now. You can only experience now. The sentences celebrate the absolute instant of creation. "It takes your breath away.”

“OHYEAHHHH!!!OHYEAH!!LOL ITS T-SHIRT TIIME..LOL.HAAHHAAHAHA.IM SO SO MISSING MY BABY LOL.GROUNDED FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE...LOL.ILU BABYBOY....”

“I'm part of the package, kitten. Your bodyguard, babysitter and tattle-tale, all rolled into one." Flashing his teeth at me, he added, "Aren't you pleased?”

“Perhaps in body I am not quite as real as you,” he said, then looked alive, making him once again seem real, even though she knew that if she tried to touch him, she could not. “But my thoughts and emotions are as real as yours. My soul, Mia Randall, is as real as yours.”