“My grandma used to plant tomato seedlings in tin cans from tomato sauce & puree & crushed tomatoes she got from the Italian restaurant by her house, but she always soaked the labels off first. I don't want them to be anxious about the future, she said. It's not healthy. ”

“My mother has told me once and for all the useful parts. She will add nothing unless powered by necessity, a riverbank that guides her life. She plants vegetable gardens rather than lawns; she carries the odd-shaped tomatoes home from the field and eats food left for the gods.”

“She was a full lipped and hipped italian tomato with Rome burning in her eyes. She had the look of a carnival in Rio, or Mardi Gras in New Orleans, or bullfights in Spain, or Saturday night in my apartment.”

“And why does he talk so funny? Doesn't he mean squashed tomatoes?I don't think that they had tomatoes when he comes from, said Bod. And that's just how they talk then.”

“Love is a tomato. And while it's true that I can live without a tomato, I could sure go for some ketchup.”

“By the time we met up again, she'd be able to hand her reaction to me as a tidy package: a single square of lasagna in a sealed Tupperware container as opposed to a squalid kitchen with tomato sauce splattered on the counters. And I wouldn't have to be there while she got it in order.”