Brook Funny Quotes

Don't get me wrong. I love a Denver omelette as much as the next girl. But I'm curious whether that’s your thing, or if you try to change up the routine depending on the specific woman. You know… like, green pepper because I have green eyes, ham because I’m so funny, and onions for all the tears you’ll shed after I leave.

always schedule your comeback.

You'll see. I have a collection of fine waistcoats and a handsome face." He stepped back to let her take in the full effect of both and her smile spread to the edge of a laugh.

Now Lewis joined in. 'A sicko walks into a bar,' he said. 'WHAM! And then i hit him with the bar again, an iron bar, and knock him flat, then i hit him again, and again and again until his brains are, like, smashed all over the pavement. And then i slice him up with my new katana!' 'Yeah, Lewis,' said Brooke. 'Funny joke. Way to lighten the mood, bruv.

Brooke?" he finally found the sense to ask. "What are you doing here?" "I need a gun." This was not how his dream was supposed to go.

You're pretty sassy this morning, son. Is it all about Reingold's rulings?" "That didn't suck, but I've got me a fascinating, beautiful woman I'm falling for. Falling hard." "Quick work." "In the blood. My mama and daddy barely did more than look at each other, and that was that. She's got me, Russ. Right here." He tapped a fist on his heart. "Surely it's not considerably lower where she's got you?" "There, too. But, Jesus, Russ, she does it for me. I just think about her, and... I swear I could look at her for hours. Days." Brooks let out a half-laugh, edged with a little surprise. "I'm done. I'm gone.

Brooke stared in surprise. “You brought me lunch?” “I was in the neighborhood.” She checked out the label on the bag. “DMK is twenty minutes from here.” “I was in that neighborhood, and now I’m here,” he said in exasperation. “Seriously, woman, you are impossible to feed.” He strode over and set the bag on her desk. “One cheeseburger with spicy chipotle ketchup and a side of sweet potato fries—chosen specifically for a certain spicy and sweet girl I know—and a green dill pickle for your eyes. So there.” He crossed his arms over his chest. Brooke studied him. “You seem very ornery right now.” “As a matter of fact, I am.” “Why?” “I don’t know,” he huffed. “Just . . . eat your Brooke Burger. Stop asking so many questions. Sometimes a guy just wants to buy a girl lunch. Any objections to that? Good. Enjoy your Sunday, Ms. Parker.” He strode out of her office, gone as quickly as he’d appeared. Brooke stared at the doorway and blinked.

He's got the kind of body that could turn a nun into a whore.

It's funny how a chubby kid can just be having fun, and people call it entertainment!

We laughed hard at real stories of tragedy. It had to be real and it had to be funny. Somebody getting hurt was wonderful. Later, as the 2000 Year Old Man with Carl Reiner I explained the difference between comedy and tragedy: If I cut my finger, that’s tragedy. Comedy is if you walk into an open sewer and die.

Did you ever get fed up?" I said. "I mean did you ever get scared that everything was going to go lousy unless you did something? I mean do you like school and all that stuff?" "It's a terrific bore." "I mean do you hate it? I know it's a terrific bore, but do you hate it, is what I mean." "Well, I don't exactly hate it. You always have to--" "Well, I hate it. Boy, do I hate it," I said. "But it isn't just that. It's everything. I hate living in New York and all. Taxicabs, and Madison Avenue buses, with the drivers and all always yelling at you to get out at the rear door, and being introduced to phony guys that call the Lunts angels, and going up and down in elevators when you just want to go outside, and guys fitting your pants all the time at Brooks, and people always--" "Don't shout, please," old Sally said. Which was very funny, because I wasn't even shouting. "Take cars," I said. I said it in this very quiet voice. "Take most people, they're crazy about cars. They worry if they get a little scratch on them, and they're always talking about how many miles they get to a gallon, and if they get a brand-new car already they start thinking about trading it in for one that's even newer. I don't even like old cars. I mean they don't even interest me. I'd rather have a goddam horse. A horse is at least human, for God's sake. A horse you can at least--" "I don't know what you're even talking about," old Sally said. "You jump from one--" "You know something?" I said. You're probably the only reason I'm in New York right now, or anywhere. If you weren't around, I'd probably be someplace way the hell off. In the woods or some goddam place. You're the only reason I'm around, practically." "You're sweet," she said. But you could tell she wanted me to change the damn subject. "You ought to go to a boys' school sometime. Try it sometime," I said. "It's full of phonies, and all you do is study so that you can learn enough to be smart enough to be able to buy a goddam Cadillac some day, and you have to keep making believe you give a damn if the football team loses, and all you do is talk about girls and liquor and sex all day, and everybody sticks together in these dirty little goddam cliques. The guys that are on the basketball team stuck together, the Catholics stick together, the guys that play bridge stick together. Even the guys that belong to the goddam Book-of-the-Month Club stick together. If you try to have a little intelligent--" "Now, listen," old Sally said. "Lots of boys get more out of school that that." "I agree! I agree they do, some of them! But that's all I get out of it. See? That's my point. That's exactly my goddamn point," I said. "I don't get hardly anything out of anything. I'm in bad shape. I'm in lousy shape." "You certainly are.

...avoid – like the measles – phony laughter. No, really. If you don’t find it to be funny, don't laugh. More evil and injustice has gotten a foothold in this world because of polite, counterfeit laughter – a desire to not “offend”, or to not be “peculiar” - than anything else. But when you do laugh, let your belly shimmy.

Funny thing about the army, they always promise to teach you “marketable skills,” but they never mention that, by far, there’s nothing more marketable than knowing how to kill some people while keeping others from being killed.

They always loved my sense of humor. There used to be a light switch inside one of the nurseries that was a cutout of Jesus putting his arm around two children on each side of him as he towered above them. The switch was ironically located in the spot of where his penis would have been and I was the first to point this out. Everyone thought it was funny until I started singing the childhood church song “Jesus Loves the Little Children.” In fear of being struck by lightning or being involved in a massive pile-up car accident after leaving, their laughing ceased. I still thought it was funny.

I’m not going anywhere with you and your Mr. Darcy accent.”. . .“Wow, I’ve hit a nerve. Mr. Darcy, huh?” he chimed. “So the hopeless romantic bit is accurate.

I choked on the air I'd just sucked in and swung around in disbelief. "What did you just say?" "Me and the whole PD heard about your wet bra, so I'm assuming your panties are wet too.

Every morning they show off their funny T-shirts, awesome sneakers, and fad accessories. Me? I wear the same dorky thing every day. White shirt. Blue pants. Penny loafers. And a plaid tie. Plaid: for when it's more important to hide stains than to look good. At least there is one good thing to come from wearing a tie. It proves I’m a boy. Obviously, eggs don’t wear ties. My

Maybe not the puking,” he affirms with a wink. “But everything right up until that moment and beyond…” He shrugs. “I feel privileged just to be around you, Brooke. No one makes me smile like you do.

You think it’s funny?” Shay said with annoyance. “Yes.” Her friend paused to get her laughter under control. “I’m sorry. It’s just that you’re the last person in the world I’d ever imagine marrying again after ol’ Mr. Flaccid Flagpole.

What if everything about me is totally made up? What if I’m actually…I don’t know. A wanted fugitive in the States.” “Julia.” He reached across the table and grabbed her hand. “Nobody makes up being a high school math teacher.” “That’s why it’s the perfect disguise!” He shook his head. “Nobody.

Yes. Let’s be honest. I’m a privileged white woman who left her kids in a $30,000 minivan watching Dora the Explorer to go in for a Starbucks. Is there any clearer picture of privilege than that? But no matter what color you are, no matter how much money you have, you don’t deserve to be harassed for making a rational parenting choice.” It’s funny, but in all the time that had passed, I had never thought about what was happening in quite those terms—as harassment. When a person intimidates, insults, verbally abuses, or demeans a woman on the street, in the bedroom, at the office, in the classroom, it’s harassment. When a woman is intimidated or insulted or abused because of the way she dresses or her sexual habits or her outspokenness on social media, she is experiencing harassment. But when a mother is intimidated, insulted, abused, or demeaned because of the way she is mothering, we call it concern or, at worst, nosiness. A mother, apparently, cannot be harassed. A mother can only be corrected.

If you were trying to startle us half to death, you succeeded,” she told him as she closed the distance between them. He responded with an angry growl, “The only thing I was trying to do was cool my a..., er, butt off.” “What?” Not the reply she had expected to get from him. “Those little shits,” he huffed, pointing in the direction of the boys’ cabins, “slipped Ex-Lax into my coffee this morning!” “How do you know it’s not just a stomach bug?” He grunted his impatience. “Because I discovered the laxative box in the boys’ bathroom garbage, alongside the empty jar of Icy Hot those delinquents thought would be funny to smear all over the toilet seat in the boys’ bathroom.” Water ran down his tanned face, spewing from his lips as he ranted angrily. No wonder Dalton had virtually flew, pants half undone, into the lake. Her lips began to twitch. This isn’t funny, she told herself. “Are you okay?” Was he okay? Dalton arched a wet brow. “My innards aren’t threatening to combust any longer, but my ass is still burning.

How did you get through it?” I asked her. I was hoping she was going to recommend a book, a pill, some quick fix to make this feeling of inadequacy go away. Instead, she looked at me kindly, quite earnestly, and said, “You know, I think after years and years, I learned to stop giving a fuck. If people I knew, friends or relatives or strangers or whoever, had an opinion about what kind of mother I was or wasn’t, if they thought I was making mistakes, or doing things the wrong way, being too this or too that, being selfish by not giving all of myself to my kids, I eventually decided, fuck ’em. I’m doing the best I can in a culture that offers parents little material or emotional support. If people have a problem with the way I’m doing it, fuck every last one of them. And it’s funny—that anger—that was what got me to a place where I could finally stop caring and enjoy the little monsters. That’s when I started feeling better.

It's funny how you never know how much you can handle until it gets worse. And just when you get used to that, it happens again. But somehow, even with this experience you find a way to make it work because that is how you cope. Not because you deserve it or because you need the experience to set priorities, but because it's the human thing and it is life. And through this experience we will grow, find out what the holiday means and learn to expect more of each other. Together we will use this struggle to make us stronger as a family and support each other when we break down. That is what a family does and how we cope.

Without being aware of it, Carlos was making a distinction in relationships that Aristotle had made more than two thousand years earlier in his Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle wrote that there is a kind of a friendship ladder, from lowest to highest. At the bottom—where emotional bonds are weakest and the benefits are lowest—are friendships based on utility: deal friends, to use Carlos’s coinage. You are friends in an instrumental way, one that helps each of you achieve something else you want, such as professional success. Higher up are friends based on pleasure. You are friends because of something you like and admire about the other person. They are entertaining, or funny, or beautiful, or smart, for example. In other words, you like an inherent quality, which makes it more elevated than a friendship of utility, but it is still basically instrumental. At the highest level is Aristotle’s “perfect friendship,” which is based on willing each other’s well-being and a shared love for something good and virtuous that is outside either of you. This might be a friendship forged around religious beliefs or passion for a social cause. What it isn’t is utilitarian. The other person shares in your passion, which is intrinsic, not instrumental. Of

In every classic comedy duo, from Laurel and Hardy to Abbott and Costello to Martin and Lewis, in order for the exchange to work, the quality of the straight man had to be as dynamic as that of the funny guy. Carl was the best at this. I could use a single question as a springboard to unplanned exposition and tangents that would be as much of a surprise to Carl as they were to the audience. Carl was a gifted partner: While he deferred the punch lines to me, he knew me well enough to follow along and cross paths enough to set me up for more opportunities. He also knew he could throw me a complete curveball and I’d swing for the fences. We were a great ad-libbed high-wire act, and like the best high-wire acts, ours was dependent upon complete trust and respect for each other. Carl once said, “A brilliant mind in panic is a wonderful thing to behold.

Well, I hate it. Boy, do I hate it,” I said. “But it isn’t just that. It’s everything. I hate living in New York and all. Taxicabs, and Madison Avenue buses, with the drivers and all always yelling at you to get out at the rear door, and being introduced to phony guys that call the Lunts angels, and going up and down in elevators when you just want to go outside, and guys fitting your pants all the time at Brooks, and people always—” “Don’t shout, please,” old Sally said. Which was very funny, because I wasn’t even shouting. “Take cars,” I said. I said it in this very quiet voice. “Take most people, they’re crazy about cars. They worry if they get a little scratch on them, and they’re always talking about how many miles they get to a gallon, and if they get a brand-new car already they start thinking about trading it in for one that’s even newer. I don’t even like old cars. I mean they don’t even interest me. I’d rather have a goddam horse. A horse is at least human, for God’s sake. A horse you can at least—” “I don’t know what you’re even talking about,” old Sally said. “You jump from one—” “You know something?” I said. “You’re probably the only reason I’m in New York right now, or anywhere. If you weren’t around, I’d probably be someplace way the hell off. In the woods or some goddam place. You’re the only reason I’m around, practically.” “You’re sweet,” she said. But you could tell she wanted me to change the damn subject. “You ought to go to a boys’ school sometime. Try it sometime,” I said. “It’s full of phonies, and all you do is study so that you can learn enough to be smart enough to be able to buy a goddam Cadillac some day, and you have to keep making believe you give a damn if the football team loses, and all you do is talk about girls and liquor and sex all day, and everybody sticks together in these dirty little goddam cliques. The guys that are on the basketball team stick together, the Catholics stick together, the goddam intellectuals stick together, the guys that play bridge stick together. Even the guys that belong to the goddam Book-of-the-Month Club stick together. If you try to have a little intelligent—” “Now, listen,” old Sally said. “Lots of boys get more out of school than that.” “I agree! I agree they do, some of them! But that’s all I get out of it. See? That’s my point. That’s exactly my goddam point,” I said. “I don’t get hardly anything out of anything. I’m in bad shape. I’m in lousy shape.” “You certainly are.

You said she works at an ice-cream shop around here, right?” He made a big show of wiping the sweat off his brow. “Come to think of it, a nice double cone would really hit the spot in this heat.” Zach’s expression was one of pure teenage mortification. “Yeah, because that’s exactly what will help my inability to talk to her—my older brother watching and critiquing all my moves.” “I thought we’d already established that you don’t have any moves.” “Now that’s funny. Picking on someone half your age. Hey, here’s an idea: I’ll introduce you to Paige as soon as I meet this so-called smart, witty, and hot woman you’re supposedly seeing. Sounds a lot like one of those made-up girlfriends who live in Niagara Falls.” “She’s real. I’m seeing her tonight, in fact.” They hadn’t decided their specific plans yet, but Brooke had texted him last night, asking if he was free. “Wow. You actually, like, beamed when you said that.” “Get out of here,” Cade scoffed. “I did not.” “What’s her name?” Cade opened his mouth to answer, then paused. Zach grinned. “Worried you can’t say it without beaming again?” Ridiculous. “Her name is Brooke.” He deliberately maintained a straight face Zach made a big show of studying him, presumably looking for any sign of this alleged “beaming.” He stepped closer and then, with a comically scrutinizing face, slowly looked at one side of Cade’s face, and then the other. Cade never cracked once. Finally, Zach gave up. “Dude, I’m impressed. You need to show me that trick.

It’s me, thinking I’m one thing, and really being something else; that’s what makes it funny. It would be just as funny to me if it was you.

I live in a world where school is in a precarious balance with social life, parties, and sports games. He lives in a world where school is all-consuming, and when his homework isn’t, Star Wars and video games are.

She was acting funny, like she was . . . I couldn’t tell. I had trained myself to read visual cues from people I knew well, so that I could tell what they were feeling, but someone like Brooke was illegible to me.

That’s so,” said Mrs. Wiggins with a laugh, and then she said: “My land, I mustn’t get to laughing, or I’ll shake this chair to pieces. Don’t you say anything funny, Freddy.” Uncle

It’s funny how something always seems to interrupt Charles’s speeches,” said Mrs. Wiggins to Freddy.

It’s funny,” said Mrs. Wiggins to her sisters, “but I kind of like to hear Mrs. Bean sing.” “I guess it doesn’t matter what a noise sounds like,” said Mrs. Wogus, “as long as you know that it means something nice.” Mrs. Wogus was inclined to be philosophical. That is, she liked talking without thinking much what she was talking about. But sometimes she said pretty wise things. Adoniram

Now, where in the world do you suppose he can be?” “Off somewhere having a good time probably,” replied Mrs. Wiggins. “Though it is funny. Henrietta would peck his eyes out if he stayed out a minute after ten o’clock.

Because if you ask me, there’s something funny about this ghost business. You know, Mr. Camphor, we had some trouble with a ghost once before—that old Ignormus. But he wasn’t much of a ghost when you got to know him, and we nailed his hide to the barn door, didn’t we, Freddy?

Outrageous behavior!” Mrs. Wiggins said. “That’s a funny name for being roped and dragged in here and locked up. Matter of fact, you’ve had the same treatment, so I might ask what you expect to gain.” Mrs. Margarine thought this over. Then she said: “Maybe you’re right. We both want to get out. Now just let me call to Thomas or Jenks—

It was Mrs. Wiggins who found Sidney later in the day. He was in the cowbarn, hanging upside down against the wall. She told him what the animals wanted. “Sure, sure!” he said. “I’ll keep an eye on your old bank.” “And you’ll patrol it nights?” “I said I would, didn’t I?” said Sidney angrily. “What you want me to do—send you a letter about it?” “I’m sorry to keep you awake when you want to go to sleep,” said the cow, “but I have to be sure of your answer, and good land, I can’t tell whether you mean it or not when you’re looking at me upside down.” “ ’Tisn’t upside down to me,” said the bat. “Maybe not. But when you’re talking to people, their expression is just as important as what they say, and you talk to anybody upside down and their expressions don’t mean anything. Your mouth is at the top of your head and if you smile the corners turn down instead of up, and your eyes look funny too. You—” “Look,” Sidney interrupted her. “I said I’d do it. Now just never mind criticizing my features and go on let me sleep, will you.” So Mrs. Wiggins went away. “There’s one thing that bat taught me,” she said to Freddy later. “I’ve never been a good liar. Folks can always tell by my face when I’m lying. Well, next time I want to tell a lie and get away with it, I’m going to stand on my head. Nobody can tell anything by my face then.

Mrs. Wiggins and Bill, the goat, were trying to do an apache dance together—it wasn’t very good, but it was funny all right—when

And it’s not just any Lickin’, Brooks. This is the Great Centennial Lickin’.

Auden’s gone full-blown Lydia “Bennet and accused me of being Lizzie. Which, I don’t mind, but still.” “Plain English here please, Em. You know I don’t speak Austen.” “Neither does she.” I exhale

Mr. Darcy regains my interest. As if he ever lost it. “Mmhmm, thanks.” The phone clicks back in its charger. My sister springs up from the floor mummy-style. “That traitor!” Okay, Darcy, see you later. I close the book. “Who was that?

I try to shake the thought away. “I don’t know what she’s talking about. He’s not nearly handsome enough to tempt me.” No one catches my Pride and Prejudice reference, of course.

What song was that? Maybe if you would’ve sung, I would’ve caught on.” I force a laugh. One step at a time, buddy. I don’t even sing for my teddy bears. That’s a different matter entirely.

Sure you don’t. And you didn’t look anything like that Mr. Doolittle in the Pride and Prejudice movie you made me watch.” I cringe. “It’s Mr. Darcy,” I correct her over my shoulder, escaping the chilly morning air by heading to the locker room. “And this situation is not worthy of comparison to that.

Whatever. I’m going to class.” “No, Harriet! You mustn’t flee the premises! Mr. Elton will soon admire thee!” She’s been poking fun at my Austen obsession since she read Emma in English.  I roll my eyes, not bothering to look back at her as I speed walk to Geometry. “Dude, spoiler alert. She doesn’t end up with Elton.

Oh my Lanta. He heard your bad Emma Woodhouse accent.

I don’t think that deserved a smack by your three-ton pocketbook.” I raise my eyebrows. “I don’t know what the code of conduct is back in Bama, but here in good ol’ Linwood County, in our Southern Hospitality Manual, section fifteen subsection seven, it clearly states that rudely ignoring someone warrants a backslap into next week.

As I’m sitting down, a spark flashes from the corner of my eye. She lights an unscented candle, the coy smile that Ryanne inherited appearing on her face.  Scratch that again. I’m going to go make a new life for myself in the woods, away from people forever

So it’s settled then,” Agent Hahn said. Shannon looked over at him quickly. He didn’t talk much, but when he did, people listened. “Toliver and I are going to take a vacation in Texas. Cam’s taking comp time, too. Funny coincidence that we’re all together, isn’t it?

 I motioned at Frank’s clipboard with a chunk of pita bread. “Gimme the skinny.”   “Well, nothing they’re asking for is too crazy. Basic needs stuff. Though they asked for access to some TV time, a communal computer so they can e-mail—”   “Gnomes e-mail?” Ramon sounded both amused and skeptical.   “Yeah, but I think the computer request was mostly from the Minotaur. The gladiators just wanted to use it to check hockey scores and stuff.”   “Anyone else think it’s funny that what Frank just said didn’t seem weird at all?” Ramon asked.   Brooke rested her chin in her hands. “Nothing seems weird to me anymore.” Ramon reached over and hugged her to him, kissing her cheek. She gave a little half smile and leaned into it.   “I was too busy trying to figure out why the gladiators wanted to check hockey scores, which just goes to show you how skewed my sense of strange has become,” I said.   Frank shrugged, not looking up from the clipboard. “They’re Canadian.”   I swallowed my vitamin as quickly as possible, grimacing from the aftertaste. “But they’re gladiators. Wouldn’t that make them Roman or Greek or something?”   “I asked them the same thing. I guess the marble they’re carved from comes from Canada. You can kind of tell if you talk to them long enough. They say ‘eh’ a lot. They don’t seem to have spent much time in their homeland, so I think they are basing most of their culture on stereotypes.”   “Maybe we should hold a Canada party or something,” I said. “Like a little cultural festival. Then we should hold one for the gnomes, because they just boggle me entirely.”   Frank snickered. “No kidding

She had devoted time to improving her reading and was now more than proficient. The shelf she'd first cleared with Bianca overflowed with tales of King Arthur and his knights, Ovid's poetry, plays by Sophocles, Aristotle and Aeschylus, Apuleius, names she loved repeating in her mind because the mere sound of them conjured the drama, pageantry, passion, transformations and suffering of their heroes and heroines. One of her favorite writers was Geoffrey Chaucer-- his poems of pilgrims exchanging stories as they traveled to a shrine in Canterbury were both heart aching and often sidesplittingly funny. Admittedly, one of the reasons she loved Chaucer was because she could read him for herself. It was the same reason she picked up Shakespeare over and over, and the works of Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle upon Tyne. They all wrote in English. Regarded as quite the eccentric, the duchess was a woman of learning who, like Rosamund, was self-taught. Her autobiography, A True Relation of my Birth, Breeding and Life, a gift from Mr. Henderson, gave Rosamund a model to emulate. Here was a woman who dared to consider not only philosophy, science, astronomy and romance, but to write about her reflections and discoveries in insightful ways. Defying her critics, she determined that women were men's intellectual equal, possessed of as quick a wit and as many subtleties if only given the means to express themselves-- in other words, access to education.

In every classic comedy duo, from Laurel and Hardy to Abbott and Costello to Martin and Lewis, in order for the exchange to work, the quality of the straight man had to be as dynamic as that of the funny guy. Carl was the best at this. I

Great. Just flipping fantastic. He’s like a warm English fire after being caught in the rain, and I’m like a hillbilly tractor stuck in the mud.

Apparently, it wasn't every day there was such a spectacle in the Louvre. Funny, I thought the Mona Lisa would have brought it out in them. It sure did in me.

I was doing perfectly fine. I’m perfectly fine. I will make it to Paris on my own, unchaperoned and without assistance.” “Well, you will need the pilot and the plane. Probably the crew as well,” he said nonchalantly.

Is this 12B? This is going to be fun!” The British accent cut through the air like a wire cutter through clay. It sliced into me and my peaceful serenity that I had created. “No, no, no, no,” I said, a little too emphatically.  “No, this isn’t 12B or no, this isn't going to be fun?” “You’ve got to be kidding me!

I think about Brooke, but I’m always thinking about Brooke. The terrible thing about love is that once you fall in love with someone, you can’t force yourself to fall out of love with them.

He flirts without thinking of the fallout. Gah. This is seriously so hard. Just make it to ten, and then we can quit. Just get it over with before he comes back in from the call. Just doooo it, I practically yell at myself. And make them good ones, Brooke. Don’t hold back!

Who is Brooke Baker at all?

Brooke, when it comes to me and what I’m looking for in this life? You’re it.

Buck up, Brooke. Things are about to get interesting.

Grey: I need you to pick up my new suit from Brooks Brothers on 6th. Jenny had something come up. Me: New phone, who dis? Grey: Do you get beat up a lot?

Anna tugged at Heddy's denim shorts, holding a charred-over remnant of a Roman candle firework she found on the ground. "Will you carry me?

And this is where you'll pinch a brown loaf," Teddy said, pointing at the toilet in a small adjoining bathroom...

Moving on was going to require leaving the woods and getting a friend set that didn’t have gray hairs, hip replacements and a few false teeth.

Dylan: What was that? Is Brooke breaking shit now? I know she's upset but she needs to remember where she is,Joey.HANDLE IT. Sweet Christ. Why couldn,t she be on bed rest at her mother's? Me: Ease up on the shouty caps,cupcake. Everything is under control. Dylan:BETTER BE.(I love you) Me: BITCH.(love you too)

Nellie the horse and her trips to town, or a cow named Molly Blue, or the Indian who came out of the woods. I wish you could have known Arleta’s grandma, Mabel. You would have loved her. She was born well over one hundred years ago on a little farm in Michigan. What a long, long time ago! Is it hard to imagine anyone that old ever being a little girl? But of course she was, and she remembered very well. Arleta never saw the little log house where Grandma Mabel was born, but she could imagine how it looked. It had one big room that was warmed by a fireplace and a big cookstove. Her brothers slept in a loft overhead, and Mabel slept in a trundle bed beside her parents’ bed. (A trundle bed is a little cot that slides under a bigger bed during the day.) The cabin sat in a small clearing in the woods, and even though there were no neighbors close by, the family felt safe and protected in its little home. By the time Mabel was ready to go to school, the log cabin had been replaced by the big farmhouse that still stood two generations later when Arleta was a little girl. Arleta’s trips to Grandma Mabel’s old home were so much fun. She explored from the attic to the root cellar, from the barn to the meadow brook. Everywhere she looked, she found a story! The attic was dusty and creaky, but what marvelous things it contained: a funny-looking wire thing that turned out to be something to wear, the button basket—a

Then Beverley Brook stepped onto the footplate and pointed a shotgun straight at the Queen’s head – I recognised the Purdey from my trunk. It was nice to see it getting an airing. Beverley herself was wearing an oversized leather jerkin and jeans. Her dreads had been tied into a plait down her back and a pair of antique leather and brass goggles were pushed up onto her brow. ‘Put your hands on your head,’ she said, ‘and step away from the boyfriend.’ The Queen hissed and gripped the rope harder.

I tried to go back online. Isn’t that funny? All I could think about was trying to escape again, getting back to my world, being safe.

That's funny , " said Freddy . " I've always wanted to be thin . Always . Sort of slender and willow . I've never seen a pig like that , but I see no reason why one shouldn't be . . . pp122-123

That's funny , " said Freddy . " I've always wanted to be thin . Always . Sort of slender and willowy . I've never seen a pig like that , but I see no reason why one shouldn't be . . . " pp. 122-123

Every morning they show off their funny T-shirts, awesome sneakers, and fad accessories. Me? I wear the same dorky thing every day. White shirt. Blue pants. Penny loafers. And a plaid tie. Plaid: for when it's more important to hide stains than to look good. At least there is one good thing to come from wearing a tie. It proves I’m a boy. Obviously, eggs don’t wear ties.

So when I’m listening to someone tell their story, I’m also asking myself, What characters does this person have in his head? Is this a confident voice or a tired voice, a regretful voice or an anticipating voice? For some reason, I like novels where the narrator has an elegiac voice. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men, and Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier, the narrators have a world-weary tone. It’s like they’re looking back on glorious past events when dreams were fresh and the world seemed new and the disappointments of life had not yet settled in. That voice sounds to me like writing done in the minor key, and I find it tremendously moving. But I guess I wouldn’t like to be around people with that voice in real life. In real life I’d prefer to be around my friend Kate Bowler’s voice. As I mentioned, Kate got cancer a few years ago, when she was a young mother, and her voice is filled with vulnerability and invites vulnerability, but mostly it says: Life can suck, but we’re going to be funny about it. She has a voice that pulls you into friendship and inspires humor; in her voice, laughter is never very far away.

A lot of people think a good conversationalist is someone who can tell funny stories. That’s a raconteur, but it’s not a conversationalist. A lot of people think a good conversationalist is someone who can offer piercing insights on a range of topics. That’s a lecturer, but not a conversationalist. A good conversationalist is a master of fostering a two-way exchange. A good conversationalist is capable of leading people on a mutual expedition toward understanding.

Ben started laughing for the first time in what felt like days. ‘There’s trees and everything; you’re so funny. What were you expecting, Morgan?