The school “still looked entirely serviceable, but Cody guessed that an ambitious superintendent had gotten a bond levy passed, and was now tormenting his prisoners at a swankier location”
Ecochondriacs, p. 98
Spreading It All Around
“‘Um,’ he said, trying to gather up his thoughts, which someone had grabbed and then kicked all over the parking lot. It was probably the devil, and he was doing a lot of kicking”
Ecochondriacs, p. 92
A Triple Whoa
“He kissed her back for about a second and a half, and then jumped the same way he had once jumped when a waiter had dropped a hot bowl of French onion soup in his lap. ‘Whoa,’ he said. Whoa, whoa, whoa. ‘’Yikes,’ he added”
Ecochondriacs, p. 92
Turned Up to Eleven
“’Any news?’ he said querulously. It sounded like someone was messing with his tremolo knob”
Ecochondriacs, p. 90
Don’t Ever Try to Build on Lies
“Son, I don’t want you to ever apologize to somebody just because they say to. If you owe them one, don’t make them ask. You should be there ahead of them. And if you don’t owe them one, then your apology is not anything with them. It is trying to put things back together on the foundation of a lie. And lies always collapse under any weight you try to put on them”
Ecochondriacs, p. 87
They Don’t Even Know Most of the Words
“Cody suddenly realized that his internal moral monitor, his robust conscience, was going to wake up any minute and start swearing at him like a machinist mate on a tramp steamer. That would not be good. That would be unsettling. Evangelical consciences don’t usually cuss like that”
Ecochondriacs, p. 81
Innocence Bumps Its Head
“‘But . . . what about academic freedom? . . . what about my arguments? . . . what about the truth?’
‘What did you get your doctorate in? Idealism? On hobbits dancing in meadows?’”
Ecochondriacs, p. 80
Not to Mention the Second Battle of Ai
“Trevor had taken the line that the Hebrew midwives were onto a good thing in lying to Pharaoh, that Rahab had done right by sending the pursuers galloping off in exactly the wrong direction, and that David was not offending against charity by pretending to be insane, much to the exasperation of Achish”
Ecochondriacs, p. 73
He Who Says A May Predict B
“Once you learn the discipline of worldview thinking, Trevor had concluded, other people think you are psychic”
Ecochondriacs, p. 72
Unlike Other People
“Professors like to talk about themselves, and so the key was to ask them to talk about themselves”
Ecochondriacs, p. 71