“(Man, I wish life had emoticons, you know? So that when your dad pisses you off you could like click a mental button or something and just show him one of those rolleyes. That would rock) Anyway.”

Josh Mendel has a secret. Unfortunately, everyone knows what it is.

Unreal. I’m feeling nostalgic for something that happened less than twenty-four hours ago. This has got to be a record.

Yes,” Howie said solemnly. “I can teach you how to be more ‘street’”. “For God’s sake…” “Or is it ‘urban’? I can’t remember. Anyway, I can teach you, grasshopper. Or hip-hopper.

You don’t swing at any pitch. You swing at the ones you can hit.

And what? Accidentally cuts off three fingers postmortem? ‘Oops, oh, no, my girlfriend just died! Clumsy me, in trying to perform CPR, I chopped off some fingers! Guess I’ll just take them with me…. Oh, darn, where did that middle finger go?

Are you stalking me, Mr. Fulton?” The idea both amused and horrified Jazz.

Homecoming’s stupid.” And it is. Buch of kids looking for excuses to grope eachother all night.

Yes, pain meant life. But the symmetric property did not apply; Life did not mean pain.

Anger and hatred, when left unfed, bleed away like air from a punctured tire, over time and days and years. Forgiveness is stealth.

This is why I forgive, but I don’t forget. When you forget someone, the forgiveness doesn’t mean anything anymore.

What was the opposite of linkage blindness? What described being certain of something without any kind of evidence?…The term was faith.

You can’t rely on love. Love will let you down every time. Every. Single. Time. I don’t love Jecca. I don’t love Fanboy. But… God, the buts in life will kill you absolutely every time, won’t they. I don’t love. But I need. I can admit that to myself.

Sometimes hope could be the most frightening thing in the world.

I suddenly realize that I’m naked, which shouldn’t bother me since it’s the phone, but for some reason it does. “How’s it hanging?” Kyra asks and now I think I’m blushing. It’s just an expression, but jeez!

…She’s not buying [the lie], but there’s nothing else on the shelves.

See, forgiveness doesn’t happen all at once. It’s not an event – it’s a process.

What’s changed? I’m a dad. That’s fundamental. Watching your kids grow, you go back a bit.

Dad, one of my first memories is of sharing my worry with you about the space shuttle poking holes in the atmosphere and letting out all of Earth’s air.

My dad and my mom had to sacrifice so much, and had to teach us and show us the way of going about things, how to be humble, all those things. They helped us stay on track for what we wanted to do.

My dad was born in Chicago in 1908… his parents came from Russia. They settled in Chicago, where they lived in a little tiny grocery store with eight or nine children – in the backroom all together – and my grandmother got the idea to go into the movie business.

My dad told me if I was ever intimidated by anyone, just picture them with their clothes off. He said that’s how he dealt with my mom.

My dad’s like, If your mom and I are having sex and we videotape it and she falls out of bed funny, can I win ten-thousand dollars?

When you get pure joy out of ‘being’ rather than ‘doing’ or ‘seeing,’ that’s when you realize how big and unexplainable some things are and being a dad is one of those very few things.

My dad was an engineer, and he became the CEO of Chevron. His was an engineer’s mind-set: Everything’s kind of a problem how do you approach the problem?