“People all over town had listened for my grandfather's cries, but there were none. Only silence.”

“There are none so deaf as those listening to ‘All by Myself’ over and over and over again.”

“New people could be seen, by people like my grandfather, as indifferent to everything that had made California work, but the ambiguity was this: new people were also who were making California rich.”

“She cried because she'd had such high, high hopes about the Wheelers tonight and now she was terribly, terribly, terribly disappointed. She cried because she was fifty six years old and her feet were ugly and swollen and horrible; she cried because none of the girls had liked her at school and none of the boys had liked her later; she cried because Howard Givings was the only man who'd ever asked her to marry him, and because she'd done it, and because her only child was insane.”

“All of my favorite people - people I really trust - none of them were cool in their younger years.”

“I wasn't crying, my eyes were running. My eyes were running because there were pieces of zombies all over my toys. Jesus.”