“We sit on the floor in front of his oscillating fan and talk sci-fi, and I am thinking how strange this is that I should be sitting peacefully with Henry Stagg in his bedroom when only a week or so ago he punched me in the face for no reason whatsoever.”

“When he smiles at me, I feel like I'm sitting under a heat lamp. I live for the times when his fingers brush my leg at lunch, or when we pass in the hallways and he raises his eyebrows at me, like we have a secret. I should feel bad--and I do, most of the time--but how can I stop thinking about him when seeing his face makes me feel so alive?”

“You should sit,” Lucas said, and he wasn't talking to Mercy.Sascha stared at him. “I didn't realize pregnancy of four weeks' duration made me incapable of standing upright.” “It makes me incapable of reason.”

“In my experience, a lot of the boys who are real computer-heads tend to be pale-skinned sci-fi fans. Not that there’s anything wrong with that—I happen to be a pale-skinned sci-fi fan myself—but that doesn’t mean I have to fancy other seethrough geeks.So let’s hope Adam isn’t as picky as me.”

“I knew it was coming. I knew they didn't have the nerve.Three days in and they've got faces like vexed tomatoes, their skins flaking sci-fi style: burnt to fuck. They were an embarrassment; not only to me and the wife and The Fall fans but to their own generation.”

“When he talked his eyes went away from mine and then he forced himself to look straight at me and he began to explain and I knew that he felt very strange with me and that he hated me, and it was funny sitting there and talking like that, knowing he hated me.”