“My worst kiss could have been an outtake from Species. I think she thought my epiglottis was a punching bag.”

“There have been so many times I felt like I've ended the conversation lately I've decided that if I had a Wu Tang name it'd be Threadkilla. ”

“Somewhere along the line I began compiling myself from the excerpts of better men.”

“Eating was a welcome distraction, not for us but for them. However the piles on the plates clashed (macaroni cheese sauce oozing orangely under the spinach salad), however sour the mixtures they made (runaway grapes rolling in the gravy!), our guests chewed to prove that their existence hadn't been diverted. For the price of a quick casserole, they bribed us into agreeing that this was God's plan, life was going on. Their cliches were breath mints: they wanted us to suck away to sweeten the bad taste our misfortune left in their mouths. And so we did.”

“sassysnacks!”

“You don’t understand.She was mean to me. Very mean. And she’s dangerous. A very dangerous girl. I’m your guardian, Ayden. I have to protect you!It’s my sworn duty. My sworn duty!”“Protect me?”“Yes!” Pearl hovered frantically in front of “her boy,” and slathered her voice with disgust. “She threatened to…” Oh, she wouldn’t.“Kiss you!”She would. My cheeks fired. I stared at the floor.Ayden laughed. “Kiss me?”“Yeeeeesss,” Pearl wailed in agony. “She promised a big juicy kiss! On a real date. No pretending. With hand holding and—and cuddling!”And I thought it couldn’t get any worse.”

“[Mr. Principi] "My question to you, class, is our species crawling toward re-enlightenment or limping toward extinction?"The smart aleck behind me. . . was threatened by my propensity to fight when he should have been afraid of Mr. Principi's question.”