“Nathaniel suddenly felt as if he’d been plonked into an I Dream of Jeannie episode.”

“Oh, Jeannie, I am so glad you woke me. I was having the worst nightmare. I felt like I was suffocating. I dreamed the Devil was trying to choke me to death.”

“You asked my opinion and I gave it. Of course you have to remember that if I’d been on the island with Gilligan, he’d have been killed ten minutes into the first episode. Where I come from, incompetence and stupidity are reasons for justifiable homicide. (Varyk)”

“It suddenly made sense. Only twice in his life had he felt this inexplicable, almost mystical attraction to a woman. He’d thought it remarkable, to have found two, when in his heart he’d always believed there was only one perfect woman out there for him. His heart had been right. There was only one.”

“It felt like he’d been dragged through the nine circles of hell — by his testicles.”

“Abruptly, they seemed alike to me and equally dear: my father, my son. I felt as though my father had been waiting for this moment to be born to me as the young man he’d been, so touchingly willing to bear witness to his conscience; and the surprise of this new sense of him, this birth, was a gift to me, a sudden balm in those days of my most intense grief.”