“We played for about half an hour before I realized we were actually playing two different games. What I’d thought of as ludo was actually a game called gin rummy, and what Warren was playing seemed to be a mixture of craps and table tennis. Once we started playing by one consistent set of rules, though, the fun was really over.”

“The stalker, meanwhile, stepped into the road. Didn’t even check for traffic. There wasn’t any, but something told me this was lucky for traffic rather than the stalker.”

“I didn’t want to do it,’ Kiala said. ‘The universe just kind of conspired to force me to make a fool of myself. It does that quite a lot, actually.”

“Mathematicians finally developed a financial model to accurately compare apples and oranges. Any two kinds of fruit can be compared, although guavas still cause minor rounding errors.”

“I’m looking into my past lives. I’m convinced some of them still owe me money.”

“I’m very polite by nature, even the voices in my head let each other finish their sentences.”