But You Can Never Love People As Much As You Can Miss Them

　　He could hear her eyes rolling as she said, "You are probably the only person I've ever known who wants to be a Siamese twin."

　　"Conjoined twin," Colin corrected. "Did you know that there is a word for a person who is not a conjoined twin?" he asked her.

　　"No. What is it? Normal person?"

　　"Singleton," he said. "The word is Singleton." And she said, “That's funny, Col. Listen, I really have to go. I've got to pack for camp. Maybe we shouldn't talk till I get back. Just some time away from it would be good for you, I think." And even though he wanted to say, We're supposed to be FRIENDS, remember? And What is it? New boyfriend? And I love you entirely, he just mumbled, "Just please listen to the message," and then she said, "Okay. Bye," and he didn't say anything because he wasn't going to be the person who ended the conversation or hung up, and then he heard the deadness in his ear and it was over. Colin lay down on the dry, orange dirt and let the tall grass swallow him up, making him invisible. The sweat pouring down his face was indistinguishable from his tears. He was finally—finally—crying. He remembered their arms entangled, their stupid little inside jokes, the way he felt when he would come over to her house after school and see her reading through the window. He missed it all. He thought of being with her in college, having the freedom to sleep over whenever they wanted, both of them at Northwestern together. He missed that, too, and it hadn’t even happened. He missed his imagined future.

　　You can love someone so much, he thought. But you can never love people as much as you can miss them.

An Abundance of Katherines, P104-105
John Green
ISBN 978-0-14-241070-7

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Like Strawwwwwberry Wine

　　They left after interviewing Katherine Layne. They drove around in Satan‘s Hearse for a while, getting good and lost with the windows rolled down, driving down a two-lane highway toward absolutely nothing. They listened to a country radio station turned up so loud that the twangs of steel guitars were distorted in the Hearse’s old speakers. When they could catch on to the chorus, they sang loud and off-key and didn‘t give a shit. And it felt so good to sing with those trumped-up, hound-dog country accents. Colin felt sad, but it was an exhilarating and infinite sadness, like it connected him to Hassan and to the ridiculous songs and mostly to her, and Colin was shouting, "Like Strawwwwwberry Wine," when all of a sudden he turned to Hassan and said, "Wait, stop here." Hassan pulled over on the gravel shoulder of the road and Colin hopped out and pulled out his telephone.

　　……

An Abundance of Katherines, P102-103
John Green
ISBN 978-0-14-241070-7

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It Tasted A Little Like Lemonade, Except Somehow More Grown-up

　　"Y'all want some tea?" Starnes asked. Without waiting for an answer, he stood up and walked into the kitchen.

　　At once sweet and bitter, it tasted a little like lemonade, except somehow more grown-up. Colin loved it — it was everything he'd hoped coffee would be — and helped himself to several glasses while Starnes talked, pausing only to take his medication (once) and go to the bathroom (four times; old people do that — they seem to love bathrooms).

An Abundance of Katherines, P81
John Green
ISBN 978-0-14-241070-7

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Caffeinated Stomach Bile

　　He called the future Katherine XIX that Friday after school and asked her out for coffee the next day, and she said yes. It was the same coffee shop where they'd had their first two meetings — perfectly pleasant events filled with so much sexual tension that he couldn't help but get a little bit turned on just from her casually touching his hand. He would put his hands up on the table, in fact, because he wanted them within her reach.

　　The coffee shop was a few miles from Katherine's house and four buildings down from Colin’s. Called Café Sel Marie, it served some of the best coffee in Chicago, which didn't matter at all to Colin, because Colin didn't like coffee. He liked the idea of coffee quite a lot — a warm drink that gave you energy and had been for centuries associated with sophisticates and intellectuals. But coffee itself tasted to him like caffeinated stomach bile. So he did an end-around on the unfortunate taste by drowning his java in cream, for which Katherine gently teased him that afternoon. It rather goes without saying that Katherine drank her coffee black. Katherines do, generally. They like their coffee like they like their ex-boyfriends: bitter.

An Abundance of Katherines, P77
John Green
ISBN 978-0-14-241070-7

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Not Without Her Heart

　　... ...

　　It might never have occurred to the girl what to do had she not met someone smaller and still curious about the world.

　　There was a time when the girl would have know how to answer her.

　　But not now. Not without her heart.

　　... ...

The Heart and the Bottle
Oliver Jeffers
ISBN 978-0-00-718234-3

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Humphrey's Family

　　Here is Baby Jack, Humphrey's little brother.

　　Baby Jack's favourite toy is Dog.

　　Dog used to bark but the string broke.



　　Baby Jack always talks baby talk.

　　He dribbles quite a lot too ...

　　Baby Jack likes joining in ... but he can't really play properly (because he is too young to understand).

Humphrey's Family
Sally Hunter
ISBN 978-0-140-56930-8

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One Fine Day

　　... ...

　　So the fox found a peddler and said, "There is a pretty maiden down the road and if you give me one blue bead for her she'll be pleased with you and pleased with me. Then she'll give me her jug so I can fetch some water to give the field to get some grass to feed the cow to get some milk to give the old woman to sew my tail in place."

　　But the peddler was not taken in by the promise of a pretty smile or the cleverness of the fox and he replied, "Pay me an egg and I'll give you a bead."

　　... ...

One Fine Day
by Nonny Hogrogian
ISBN 978-0-02-043620-1

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Me Too

　　I started to cry.

　　'Pingu sad,' said my little brother.

　　And I explained that Pingu was sad because his mother and father had been run over by a terrible red truck which came slidding over the ice. The Pingu and his little sister couldn't get inside the igloo. They sat outside, freezing.

　　Pingu cried louder and louder.

　　'Other one,' said my little brother.

　　He wanted something different on TV. Me too.

When we were alone in the World
Ulf Nilsson, Eva Eriksson
ISBN 978-1-877467-34-9

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Nothing More Than an Ordinary Part of Life

　　The Valium helped, but it still seemed to be an eternity before they arrived in Goa and the bus ride came to an end. Lor realized that the fact that she was in such psychological distress from a simple nine hours of discomfort —— not even pain, just discomfort —— was a sign of how different she was from the Indians around her, who accepted this trial as nothing more than an ordinary part of life. All of the Indians were laughing and excited as they exited the bus, stretching their limbs joyfully, ready for a day of touring in sunny Goa. Arman, even, had taken it a bit better than she had, and it made her understand more fully how much one is changed by war. Lor, of course, had never fought in a war. She had never even run an obstacle course. The most that she had done, really, was birth a child —— even that she had done with an epidural and, in the end, while unconscious.

　　It made her think that all of Arman’s talk about fat-fuck Americans being somehow unworthy of their status as world megapower was more justified than she had first thought.

The Girls from Corona del Mar, P147
Rufi Thorpe
ISBN 978-0-385-35196-6

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