“Okay, okay,' I said to my husband as he picked up a food dehydrator off the table and shot me a look. 'Maybe I did get carried away. Maybe the world won't end in a year, maybe it won't end until 2028, when the Aztec calendar stops.''The Bugles will be very old by then,' my husband said. 'They will have lost their snappy crunch.''They weren't to eat,' I said. 'They were to put on our fingers and poke the eyes out of looters.”

“Okay,” he said. “I gotta go to sleep. It’s almost one.” 
“Okay,” I said.
 “Okay,” he said. 
I giggled and said, “Okay.” And then the line was quiet but not dead. I almost felt like he was there in my room with me, but in a way it was better, like I was not in my room and he was not in his, but instead we were together in some invisible and tenuous third space that could only be visited on the phone. “Okay,” he said after forever. “Maybe okay will be our always.”
 “Okay,” I said.
 It was Augustus who finally hung up.”

“You're flying to Chicago to get drunk and have other women shake their boobs in your face.""If it bothers you, I won't go," he said seriously."No," I kicked at the table leg. "It doesn't bother me. Maybe I'm just jealous.""Jealous? You're not the jealous type.""Maybe I want boobs shaken in my face.”

“I grab a snap pea and bite off the end of it, and then I pick up my glass of milk. I'm overwhelmed by the emptiness in my middle that food won't fill.”

“What have you done to my cat?" Magnus demanded... "You drank his blood, didn't you? You said you weren't hungry!"Simon was indignant. "I did not drink his blood. He's fine!" He poked the Chairman in the stomach. The cat yawned. "Second, you asked me if I was hungry when you were ordering pizza, so I said no, because I can't eat pizza. I was being polite.""That doesn't get you the right to eat my cat.""Your cat is fine!" Simon reached to pick up the tabby, who jumped indignantly to his feet and stalked off the table. "See?""Whatever.”

“I do not know what it means to be okay. I have never known and maybe I will never know. Okay is just a word I use so I won't have to talk about what's inside. Okay is a word that means I am going to keep my secrets.”