Carol

“we’ll talk about another. Are we okay?” “I’m not old enough for this!” Dev said, his voice sharp. “I’m not old enough to end up here. I’m not old enough to test for AIDS, I’m not, I’m not—” “The hell you’re not!” Joe hissed, because the boy’s voice was rising and breaking. “You’re old enough to have sex, you’re old enough to think about this. Yeah, I know—you used to be able to fuck and all you had to worry about was crabs or knocking a girl up. We can’t do that anymore, and we can’t go back. If you can’t look yourself in the mirror and say ‘I’m gonna get laid tonight, and I need some fucking condoms’, you’re not old enough to do it. But once you start putting your peter some place besides your pants, you’ve got to cowboy up, do you hear me?”
― Amy Lane, Sidecar

“But then, life with Casey would tend to be that way for Joe—moments of gorgeous, shining faith and moments of agonizing, painful doubt. Joe was young in his way too. It would take him years before he recognized the ebb and flow of true love.”
― Amy Lane, Sidecar

“On the roads around where I live there are large numbers of idiots who will not park their cars on their driveways.”
― Joe Cater, Titanic Britain: 50 Years of the Left-Wing Liberal Iceberg

“I suppose he'll die soon. I'm expecting it, like you do for a dog that's seventeen. There's no way to know how I'll react. He'll have faced his own placid death and slipped without a sound inside himself. Mostly, I imagine I'll crouch there at the door, fall onto him, and cry hard into the stench of his fur. I'll wait for him to wake up, but he won't. I'll bury him. I'll carry him outside, feeling his warmth turn to cold as the horizon frays and falls down in my backyard. For now, though, he's okay. I can see him breathing. He just smells like he's dead.”
― Markus Zusak, I Am the Messenger