“For some parents, having children meant full absolution from any future mistakes. My father wouldn't permit himself to be wrong. He shifted the blame of misplaced scissors, rising interest rates, and iceless ice cube trays all unto Riegel and me.”

“Don't blame anyone for what has happened to your father. Things have changed drastically since the days of his own youth,but he has refused to see the changes...The fact is that parents get only reflected glory from their children nowadays,whereas your father has invested in all of you, just as his father invested in him so that he could help on the farm. Your father forgot that he himself left the family farm to come to this place.”

“He's not a bad guy, John. It's human nature. He wanted it to be some mistake I made that he wouldn't have made, some flaw in me that he didn't share, so he could believe it wouldn't have happened to him. But it wasn't my fault. It was either blind, dumb, stupid luck from start to finish, in which case, we are all in the wrong business gentleman, or it was a God I cannot worship.”

“Is that how you're going to take me? Scare me into voluntarily coming aboard, then steal my Ice Cube?""It's always cubes with you," noted Foaly, somewhat randomly. "What's wrong with a nice sphere?”

“I hid Mrs. Frozenwater’s body in the ice cube trays in my freezer. Better to keep her there than let her memory thaw out and evaporate. Scotch on the rocks, anyone?
”

“The beauty of “spacing” children many years apart lies in the fact that parents have time to learn the mistakes that were made with the older ones — which permits them to make exactly the opposite mistakes with the younger ones.”