“How was your day?” he asked. I faltered, unaccustomed to the question. The look on my face must have been strange because he laughed at me and said, “Okay… don’t tell me then.”Considering the question I asked, “Do people normally want a real answer to that?”I’d only been asked for reports by my father or his team.Julian thought for a moment and shrugged, “I suppose not. Most people say ‘good’ or ‘fine’ even when they don’t mean it.”He mistook my question for simple speculation instead of a lack of understanding. Nodding I snickered and said, “Then it was fine. Yours?”He grinned, “Good.”

“So what are you saying?” Keath asked, though it was clear he was dreading the answer.“I’m saying is that I don’t want to be a part of this. I want my life to stay the way it is, and that means I can’t be a friend of yours. I don’t want any part of the faerie world.”“That’s how normal people are supposed to react when they find out about all this,” Carlow said, looking pointedly at Kath and Katie, who just shrugged. They had never pretended to be normal.”

“I just stare at him. I want to ask him a thousand questions, but I can tell he doesn't want to be asked. "We make weird friends," I say instead."I've never been into the f-word with people.""I'm privileged, then? Why me?"He thinks for a moment and shrugs again."You're the realest person I've ever known.""Is that good or bad?""It's fucking awful. There's not much room for bullshit, and you know how I thrive on it."We laugh for a moment and begin walking again.”

“Debt Chauffeur, that's my name for him now, wants to marry me. He asked me down on bended knee, and I would have been honored - except he wants us to live in London, and he wants me to live white. I crowed at that. I laughed so hard and not a tear came. He couldn't understand it. I don't often think on how white I look; it's always been a question of how colored I feel, and I feel plenty colored. He said that no one in London will know that I'm supposed to be colored. And I said I am colored, colored black, the way I talk, the way I cook, the way I do most everything, and he said but you don't have to be. ”

“Why do you pray?" he asked me, after a moment. Why did I pray? A strange question. Why did I live? Why did I breathe?"I don't know why," I said, even more disturbed and ill at ease. "I don't know why."After that day I saw him often. He explained to me with great insistence that every question possessed a power that did not lie in the answer. "Man raises himself toward God by the questions he asks Him," he was fond of repeating. "That is the true dialogue. Man questions God and God answers. But we don't understand His answers. We can't understand them. Because they come from the depths of the soul, and they stay there until death. You will find the true answers, Eliezer, only within yourself!" "And why do you pray, Moshe?" I asked him. "I pray to the God within me that He will give me the strength to ask Him the right questions.”

“Just what the hell did you mean, you bastard, when you said we couldn't punish you?" said the corporal who could take shorthand reading from his steno pad."All right," said the colonel. "Just what the hell did you mean?""I didn't say you couldn't punish me, sir.""When," asked the colonel."When what, sir?""Now you're asking me questions again.""I'm sorry, sir. I'm afraid I don't understand your question.""When didn't you say we couldn't punish you? Don't you understand my question?""No, sir, I don't understand.""You've just told us that. Now suppose you answer my question.""But how can I answer it?""That's another question you're asking me.""I'm sorry, sir. But I don't know how to answer it. I never said you couldn't punish me.""Now you're telling us what you did say. I'm asking you to tell us when you didn't say it."Clevinger took a deep breath. "I always didn't say you couldn't punish me, sir.”