The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, r. Aug. 2014

p. 51 It's never the changes we want that change everything.

p. 119 ...folks always underestimate what the promise of a lifetime of starvation, powerlessness, and humiliation can provoke in a young person's character. By the time the Gangster was twelve this scrawny, unremarkable boy had shown a resourcefulness and fearlessness beyond his years.

p. 214 He encouraged his daughters to read and prepared them to follow him into the Profession (they could speak French and read Latin before they were nine), and so keen was he about learning that any new piece of knowledge, no matter how arcane or trivial, could send his ass over the Van Allen belt.

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson, r. Aug. 2014

p. ix Growing up was easy. It required no though or effort on my part. It was going to happen anyway. So what follows isn't terribly eventful, I'm afraid. And yet it was by a very large margin the most fearful, thrilling, interesting, instructive, eye-popping, lustful, eager, troubled, untroubled, confused, serene, and unnerving time of my life.

p. 29 So this is a book about being small and getting larger slowly. One of the great myths of life is that childhood passes quickly. In fact, because time moves more slowly in Kid World - five times more slowly in a classroom on a hot afternoon, eight times more slowly on any car journey of more than five miles (rising to eighty-six times more slowly when driving across Nebraska or Pennsylvania lengthwise), and so slowly during the last week before birthdays, Christmases, and summer vacations as to be functionally immeasurable - it goes on for decades when measured in adult terms. It is adult life that is over in a twinkling.