“My voice softens. 'How old are you?''I'll be eleven next year.'I grin. 'So you're ten years old?'He crosses his arms. Frowns. 'I'll be twelve in two years.'I think I already love this kid.”

“I love you, Em. I've loved you since I was eight years old, and I'll love you my whole life.”

“I can't see how I'll make it a year this way," he said."It seems impossible, I know. But when we're old and doddering, this year will seem like a blink.”

“How old are you? Twelve?""Fourteen & three quarters."His eyes sparkled. "You're kind of little for fourteen and three quarters.""Am not," I replied indignantly. "I'm a sophomore this year. How old are you?" "Seventeen and two fifths."Hardy Cateses & Liberty Jones.”

“What happened to YOU old partner?" Lex asked him. "Suicide I take it?"He frowned. "Worse - business school. Can you believe it? Two years of Croak, then one day the kid decided he wants to be the next Donald Trump. So we threw him in a car, dropped him off near Woodstock and now he think he spent the past two years in a drug-addled haze at some hippie commune.”

“I try to think of something catchy to say, but there's nothing but irritation that something that was funny yo an eleven-year-old boy is still funny to a seventeen-year-old one.”