“Well, I'll just toss these cake samples if we're not going to use them," said Hermes, vanishing with the cakes."Apollo?" Hera clutched at his golden breastplate. "Apollo, we can still have a party, right? When was it going to be? I'll act surprised, I promise. I will!""Sorry, Hera...the fun just seems to have gone out of it now.”

“Honeyed oatie cakes, lemon oatie cakes, oatie cakes with dried grapes!" moaned Athena, she and her owl both rolling her eyes."I've still got sacks fullin my storage rooms," said Artemis. "I give them to my temple priestesses to hand out to people who pray really hard...or not.""I use them as fish food," said Poseidon."Kindling," said Hephaestus. "They burn great on the forge.""I've sent a million sacks down to Egypt," said Dionysus. "They ran out of bricks for the Pyramids.”

“I don't promise to forget the mystery, but I know I'll have a marvelous time.”

“If I go out there now, I'll freeze my balls off. Not that I'm putting them to any good use whatsoever, but I still like to have them, just in case.”

“You know how I feel about love. It was invented to sell wedding cakes. And vacations to Waikiki.”

“Up ahead stands the fun house, which you enter through a clown’s smiling mouth.“I would kill myself if I was prisoner here,” Shelby says.“No, you wouldn’t, just out of courtesy,” I say, “because your body would be trapped in there after you die, and your friends would have to watch your corpse rot.”“Hmm,” Shelby says. “Smell it too.”“Well, now we’re looking on the bright side,” Packard says.”

“I wanted something from him then, this man I'd married. I wanted to dance with him in our living room late at night; I wanted to make love on the floor while a song that shaped all my views of love played in the background. If this was love, if this was marriage, then we should have access to everything those songs promised. We should own that romance. I gathered my courage; I walked over & put my hand on his shoulder, pulled him to his feet, but I knew immediately that i couldn't go through with it. We were both too self-conscious. He did a kind of joke dance, swinging me around with jerky movements, and then he went up to bed, leaving me by myself. And how could I could complain? That was the man I married; he was wonderful in many ways, but he was never going to dance with me in our living room. He wasn't going to come back down the stairs and take me in his arms. Those were just facts I'd have to face.”