“Chance stifled a grin, and all I could think was that this girl had to be related to me. Only women who were related to me annoyed me this much.”

“I hate everything that does not relate to literature, conversations bore me (even when they relate to literature), to visit people bores me, the joys and sorrows of my relatives bore me to my soul. Conversation takes the importance, the seriousness, the truth, out of everything I think.”

“I wondered if the fire had been out to get me. I wondered if all fire was related, like Dad said all humans were related, if the fire that had burned me that day while I cooked hot dogs was somehow connected o the fire I had flushed down the toilet and the fire burning at the hotel. I didn't have the answers to those questions, but what I did know was that I lived in a world that at any moment could erupt into fire. It was the sort of knowledge that kept you on your toes.”

“I love hearing my relations abused. It is the only thing that makes me put up with them at all. Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven't got the remotest knowledge of how to live nor the smallest instinct about when to die.”

“Tack grinned."You know," I started, "it's annoying when you grin all know-it-all.""This isn't my know-it-all grin, Red. This is my I'm gonna get me some later grin."I felt a couple of quivers that were on the high end of pleasant scale.Still, I shared. "That's even more annoying.""Don't know why since me gettin' some means you're gonna get some.”

“All is tedious, in this relation that is forced upon me.”