“Image of a girl holding a blaster to a twin’s temple. “Remember, bi***. You can’t spell ‘danger’ without DNA.”Blam.”

“I don’t know. D’you think? He’s pretty wide in the chest.” The girl looked at me, and I was frozen. So I said, “Yeah. I work out.” Violet asked me, “What are you? What’s your cup size?” I shrugged and played along. “Like, nine and a half?” I guessed. “That’s my shoe size.” Violet said, “I think he’d like something slinky, kind of silky.” I said, “As long as you can stop me from rubbing myself up against a wall the whole time.” “Okay,” said Violet, holding her hands up like she was annoyed. “Okay, the chemise last week was a mistake.”

“There are times when friendship feels like running down a hill together as fast as you can, jumping over things, spinning around, and you don't care where you're going, and you don't care where you've come from, because all that matters is speed, and the hands holding your hands.”

“To participate, then, in the pomp of the orchestra, in the full scintillation thereof, was in the highest degree thrilling. Is this not the image of the perfect republic -- each instrument singing its wonted melody, endeavoring at once to express its part, and, in the same instance to conform its voice to the conversation of the whole?”

“ We enter a time of calamity. Blood on the tarmac. Fingers in the juicer. Towers of air frozen in the lunar wastes. Models dead on the runways, with their legs facing backward. Children with smiles that can’t be undone. Chicken shall rot in the aisles. See the pillars fall.”

“Hold on to your hats, ladies!’ cried Jasper Dash. ‘You’re in for a wild ride! This futuristic buggy can attain speeds of up to thirty-five miles per hour!”

“Reading, once begun, quickly becomes home and circle and court and family; and indeed, without narrative, I felt exiled from my own country.”