“He's been hung up on a one-night-stand he had five years ago with a girl that smelled like Cocoa Puffs.”

“Holy mother of Lord Cocoa Puffs”

“Hiro is a talented drifter. This is the kind of lifestyle that sounded romantic to him as recently as five years ago. But in the bleak light of full adulthood, which is to one's early twenties as Sunday morning is to Saturday night, he can clearly see what it really amounts to: He's broke and unemployed.”

“He hung up on her. She'd just been hung up on by a disembodied brain in a jar. Fantastic.”

“You have a wife?” Caxton demanded. “I killed a vampire twenty years ago, and another one last night. I had to keep myself busy in the meantime,” he told her.”

“The mother was holding a baby, had a stroller with what looked like twin girls around three, and had a five-year-old boy who was running around the shelves with a finger shoved up his nose. I considered warning him that if he fell, he would poke his brain out, but it struck me that losing intelligence was not something he was worried about.”