If Levi were a dog, he'd be a golden retriever. If he were a game, he'd be a Ping-Pong, incessant and bouncing and light.

Sometimes writing is running downhill, your fingers jerking behind you on the keyboard the way your legs do when they can’t quite keep up with gravity.

To really be a nerd, she'd decided, you had to prefer fictional worlds to the real one.

I don’t trust anybody. Not anybody. And the more that I care about someone, the more sure I am they’re going to get tired of me and take off.

Smiling is confusing, she thought. This is why I don’t do it.

Months are different in college, especially freshman year. Too much happens. Every freshman month equals six regular months—they're like dog months.

I don't want to do anything. I don't even want to start this day because then I'll just be expected to finish it.

Emergency dance party--go away.

I don't like hello. It makes me sound like I have dementia, like I've never heard a phone ring before and I don't know what's supposed to happen next. Hello?

You flirt with everything." She could tell that her eyes were popping-- her eyeballs actually felt cold around the edges. "You flirt with old people and babies and everybody in between.

She was tired of being the one who cried.

Scratch a “libertarian” these days, and you will find...a leftist.

On life's vast ocean diversely we sail, Reason the card, but passion is the gale; Nor God alone in the still calm we find, He mounts the storm, and walks upon the wind.

I'll live a lush life in some small dive.

She was no longer wrestling with the grief, but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts.

Bob Hope, Red Skelton, and Eddie Cantor... help us keep our balance.

I’m the one who looks at the infant, smiles nervously, and as my contribution to small talk, robotically announces to the parent, “Your child looks healthy and well cared for.

Being right wasn't nearly as important as doing right.

America is deeply rooted in Negro culture: its colloquialisms; its humor; its music.

Crash programs fail because they are based on theory that, with nine women pregnant, you can get a baby in a month.

No matter what great things you accomplish, somebody helps you.