“If you picked up the Life of Frank movie case at Scarecrow Video, the best review on the back would just say, 'Meh.”

“That’s what happens when you force someone to choose. Maybe they pick option A, maybe they pick option B, but most will go for a third option that isn’t asking them to pick favorites in the first place.”

“When you break up with someone, and I’m not talking casual breakups here, it’s hard to take the sudden absence of such an important person in your life. It reminded me of when I’d stopped going to school and the weird uneasy feeling I’d gotten afterward, like I was forgetting to do something. My life until that point had pivoted around some form of education, and all of a sudden, it was gone. Homework, classes, running around, and then – bam – nothing but a life of work stretching out before you. No one prepares you for that feeling or even mentions it. You just suddenly have a gap and have to decide how to fill it. A break up is like that gap, only much, much more painful. One day the person you talked to constantly or did stuff with is just absent. Gone. Poof. And even though I’m not one of those people who has to be in a relationship all the time, I was feeling at a loss.”

“Sometimes life offers you up that kind of dichotomy, that soul-shearing rift of two very different things happening at once.”

“I stared at the pictogram of a burger nestled between similar representations of shakes, sodas, and fries, on the front of my register. I wondered why humankind seemed so dead set on destroying all of its accomplishments. We draw on cave walls, spend thousands of years developing complex language systems, the printing press, computers, and what do we do with it? Create a cash register with the picture of a burger on it, just in case the cashier didn't finish the second grade. One step forward, two steps back-- like an evolutionary cha-cha. Working here just proved that the only thing separating me from a monkey was pants.”

“Ramon looked closely at the little guy as he ate. "Maybe he's Jewish. I mean, if Sammy Davis Jr. could convert to Judaism, why not a chupacabra? We should name him Harry Mendelbaum."I held up my arms in protest. "You're all racist. Now shut up. We'll call him Taco von Precious of Svenenstein. There, everybody happy?""Isn't von the same thing as of?" Frank asked. "Wouldn't that be kind of redundant?""You're redundant," I said.”

“Homework, classes, running around, and then—bam—nothing but a life of work stretching out before you. No one prepares you for that feeling or even mentions it. You just suddenly have a gap and have to decide how to fill it.”