“Jason straightened his shirt. “What’s ‘chauvinistic’ mean?”“It’s in the dictionary next to a picture of your father,” mutteredKyle.”

“Or why you are wearing a picture of Santa Clause on you shirts, but-”“It’s Herman Melville.”

“In the dictionary, next to the word stress, there is a picture of a midsize mutant stuck inside a dog crate, wondering if her destiny is to be killed or to save the world. Okay, not really. But there should be.”

“good-bad,right-wrong,once you tag things like that,you lose the ability to see the complete truth.... A murderer can also be a loving father. Don't tag things. Words are insufficient to describe the picture in totality. Try not to get trapped in the dictionary meaning of words.”

“It’s strange how dreams get under your skin and give your heart a test for what’s real and what’s imaginary.”

“He told me about his slow realization that when one person in a family was sick, the whole family was sick. In Jason's case, the sick person was his father, who was nice enough when he was sober, but mean as a snake when he was drunk.”