“This used to be a mean monster until he got sick one winter with the flu & stayed in bed & watched too much Little House on the Prairie & now the littlest thing & he starts to cry.”

“We still got roaches on the bed, walls, and floors, but Troy ain’t even crying ‘bout them no more. He probably too used to them by now.”

“War is like a monster," he says, almost to himself. "War is the devil. It starts and it consumes and it grows and grows and grows." He's looking at me now. "And otherwise normal men become monsters, too.”

“I slipped the acres of pink taffeta over my head and struggled to get it zipped. What had originally been a dress from the Little House on the Prairie collection was now straight out of the Little Whore-house on the Prairie collection.”

“he was sick of the accidents, sick to his stomach. It was the darkness workers didn't see things. The shifts were too long, the tools too blunt, the wage too low.And he was the one they blamed.”

“I buried a nickel under the porch when I was 8, she said, but one day my grandma died & they sold the house & I never got to go back for it.A nickel used to mean something, I said.She nodded. It still does, she said & then she started to cry.”