“Well, duh. You're cuter than she is." He said it like he might say, Grass is green or, Gravity works.Something warm opened up inside my chest. It was a nice feeling.”

“Well, duh. You're cuter than she is." He said it like he might say, Grass is green or, Gravity works.”

“The sky is blue,' he said, 'the grass is green.' Looking up, he saw that, on the contrary, the sky is like the veils which a thousand Madonnas have let fall from their hair; and the grass fleets and darkens like a flight of girls fleeing the embraces of hairy satyrs from enchanted woods. 'Upon my word,' he said [...], 'I don't see that one's more true than another. Both are utterly false.”

“I didn't think he was a very 'nice' person,' says Chichilnisky [about Jeff Bezos]. 'I liked him, but he was not warm. I'm not criticising him, not a bit. It was like he could be a Martian for all I knew. A well-meaning, nice Martian.”

“Look what I found, Eight!”Eight disappears from the grass and reappears up in the air next to the Chest. He wraps his arms around it and hugs it. Slime and all. Then he teleports back to the edge of the lake, the Chest still in his hands. “I can’t believe it,” Eight finally says. “All this time, it was right here.” He looks stunned.“It was inside a Mog ship at the bottom of the lake,” I say, walking out of the water.Eight disappears again and teleports directly in front of me, our noses practically touching. Before I can register how nice his warm breath feels on my face, he picks me up and kisses me hard on the mouth as he twirls me around. My body stiffens and I suddenly have no idea what to do with my hands. I don’t know what to do at all, so I just let it happen. He tastes salty and sweet at the same time. The whole world disappears and I feel as if I’m floating in darkness. (Rise of the Nine)”

“I've been clinically diagnosed with sociopathy,' I said. 'Do you know what that means?''It means you're a freak,' he said.'It means that you're about as important to me as a cardboard box,' I said. 'You're just a thing - a piece of garbage that no one's thrown away yet. Is that what you want me to say?''Shut up,' said Rob. He was still acting tough, but I could see his bluster was starting to fail. He didn't know what to say.'The thing about boxes,' I said, 'is that you can open them up. Even though they're completely boring on the outside, there might be something interesting inside. So while you're saying all of these stupid, boring things I'm imagining what it would be like to cut you open and see what you've got in there.”