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She twisted her hand in mine and looked down, hiding the roses blooming on her cheeks. It made sense. If my sister had to have a crush on someone, Sohrab was a good choice, even if he was too old for her. (Pg 232)

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Some people said Dad had Aryan looks, which always made him uncomfortable. The word Aryan used to mean noble-it's an old Sanskrit word, and Mom says it's actually the root word for Iran- but it means something different now. (Pg 13)

I was one tiny pulsar in a swirling, luminous galaxy of Iranians, held together by the gravity of thousands of years of culture and heritage. (Pg 220)

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Unlike me, Laleh did speak Farsi, pretty much fluently. (Pg 20)

Javaneh had the smooth, olive-toned look of a True Persian, arched eyebrows and all. I was kind of jealous of her- Mom had inherited Mamous pale coloring, which meant I didn't even get a half dose of Persian melanin. (Pg 31)

Sohrab swallowed. "Darioush. Do you believe in God?" I looked away. Like I said, I didn't really believe in any sort of higher power, The Picard notwithstanding. I found my own chunk of roof to throw off. "I guess not," I said. (Pg 221)

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"You know if you just stood up for yourself, they'd leave you alone." I sucked on the tassels of my hoodie. Stephen Kellner didn't understand anything about the sociopolitical dynamics of Chapel Hill High School (Pg 13)

Not only that, but he was bald and still managed to be confident, which was good, because I had seen pictures of men on my mom's side of the family, and they all shared the distinguished Picard Crescent. (Pg 19)

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I loved my little sister. Really. It was impossible not to. (Pg 16)

It always seemed like Farsi was a special thing between Mom and Laleh, like Star Trek was between Dad and me. (Pg 21)

But I did play with dolls with Laleh. And I had tea parties with her (though I insisted we serve real tea, not imaginary tea, and certainly not anything from Tea Haven). And I was not ashamed of it. I just didn't tell anyone about it. (Pg 16.)

"I love you, maman." Grandma and Oma, Dad's moms, didn't say that very often. It's not that they didn't love me and Laleh, but they were full of Teutonic reserve, and didn't express affection very often. (Pg 75)

For Fariba Bahrami, love was an opportunity, not a burden. I swallowed away the lump in my throat. "I love you, Mamou." (Pg 75)

It reminded me of when she was little-really little- and I would get to hold her whenever Mom and Dad needed a break. Even if she was wound up, she'd eventually fall asleep on my lap, her face mashed into my shoulder, arms limp, mouth drooling. That was my favorite version of Laleh. When all I had to do was hold her, and she loved me more than anything. (Pg 227)

She twisted her hand in mine and looked down, hiding the roses blooming on her cheeks. It made sense. If my sister had to have a crush on someone, Sohrab was a good choice, even if he was too old for her. (Pg 232)

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Trent and I had known each other since kindergarten. We were friends back then, in the way that everyone is friends in kindergarten, before sociopolitical alliances begin to cement, (Pg 5)

Javaneh was the closest thing I had to a friend and I didn't wanna risk alienating her by prying to deeply. (Pg 31)

I didn't get that at all. If I'd had a best friend- Javaneh was my closest friend, but we weren't anything approaching best friends- we would've always been on the same team. (Pg 39)

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That was before Dr. Howell switched me off Prozac, which gave me mood swings so extreme, they were more like Mood Slingshot Maneuvers, powerful enough to fling me around the sun and accelerate me into a time warp. (Pg 33)

Dad never really talked about his own diagnosis for depression. It was lost to histories of a prior age of this world. (Pg 33)

Well. Not kind of. I was overweight, period, which is why Stephen Kellner was always handing me the salad bowl. As if salad would conteract the weight gain from my meds. (Pg 37)

I loved the quiet. Even if it sometimes made me think of sad things. Like whether anyone would miss me if I was dead. I sipped my tea and breathed in the jasmine and wondered if anyone woud be sad if I was killed in a car accident or something. That's normal. Right? (Pg 224)

In that moment I understood my grandfather perfectly. Ardeshir Bahrami was as sad as I was. (Pg 231)

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Some people said Dad had Aryan looks, which always made him uncomfortable. The word Aryan used to mean noble-it's an old Sanskrit word, and Mom says it's actually the root word for Iran- but it means something different now. (Pg 13)

Mom only ever cooked Persian food on the weekends, because pretty much every Persian menu was a complicated affair involving several hours of stewing and she didn't have time to devote to a stew- (Pg 15)

The thing about Farsi is, it's a very deep language: deeply specific, deeply poetic, deeply context-sensitive. (Pg 20)

Mamou and Babou were Mom's parents. Their real names were Farba and Ardeshir, but we always called them Mamou and Babou. Mamou and Babou mean mother and father in Dari, which is the dialect my grandparents spoke growing up Zoroastrian in Yazd. (Pg 21)

Dad makes us turn our end table into a Haft-Seen on March 1 every year. And every year, Mom tells him that's too early. And every year, Dad says it's to get us in the Nowruz spirit, even though Nowruz- the Persian New Year- isn't until the first day of spring. (Pg 25)

Chaharshanbeh Suri is the Tuesday night before Nowruz. Which is weird because Chaharshanbeh technically means Wednesday. (Pg 31)

When I freaked out at a kid in my Boy Scouts troop named Vance Henderson, who had made a joke about Mom's accent. I'd been dealing with jokes like that my entire life (Pg 34)

Mom sat up front with him, talking in farshi and sharing a bag of tokhmeh, roasted watermelon seeds, which are the favorite snack of True Persians everywhere. (Pg 73)

True Persians are heavily invested in the reproductive opportunities of their descendants. (Pg 74)

I was one tiny pulsar in a swirling, luminous galaxy of Iranians, held together by the gravity of thousands of years of culture and heritage. (Pg 220)

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I knew, but that never mattered to Stephen Kellner, Devil's Advocate. (Pg 13)

That didn't matter though. Stephen Kellner had very short, very straight, very blonde, and he had very blue eyes too. My father was pretty much the Ubermensch. (Pg 13)

I did not inherit any of Dad's good looks. (Pg 13)

Sometimes I thought about how I didn't really feel like Stephen Kellner's son at all. (Pg 14)

Mom was a UX designer at a firm in downtown Portland, which sounded incredibly cool (Pg 15)

Dad was a partner in an architecture firm that mostly designed museums and concert halls and other "centerpieces for urban living" (Pg 15)

I loved my little sister. Really. It was impossible not to. (Pg 16)

It felt good to have a thing with Dad, when I could have him to myself for forty-seven minutes, and he could act like he enjoyed my company for the span of one episode. (Pg 18)

It wasn't like I didn't want to talk to Mamou. I always wanted to talk to her. But it was hard. It didn't feel like she was half a world away, it felt like she was half a universe away- like she was coming to me from some alternate reality. It was like Laleh belonged to that reality, but I was just a guest. (Pg 24)

Babou had a brain tumor. (Pg 29)

Well. Not kind of. I was overweight, period, which is why Stephen Kellner was always handing me the salad bowl. As if salad would conteract the weight gain from my meds. (Pg 37)

"This is supposed to be our thing. You and me. This was our time together. And she's ruining it." "Did it ever occur to you that I might actually enjoy watching it with her?" Stephen Kellner had never hit me. Not ever. But this felt like it. (Pg 225)

"Don't be upset, Darius." "I'm not upset, okay?" Stephen Kellner didn't like it when I got upset. He didn't like it when I had feelings. (Pg 225)

Even when Dad stopped telling me stories, he made a point of saying "I love you" every night before I went to bed. It was a thing. And I always say "I love you" back to him. It was our tradition. That night, Dad didn't tell me that he loved me. I didn't tell him either. (Pg 225)