“My children are monsters, Kiro thought. And I am responsible. Perhaps if I had read them the haikus of Basho when they were little instead of that American manifesto of high-pressure sales, Green Eggs and Ham...”

“One day I was telling him that I thought that cars had replaced guns as phallic symbols for American men, and I thought it was interesting that he had one that was so small and fast. The next day he gave me the Datsun and went out and bought a Lincoln.”

“[Acknowledgments] I recommend them all for further reading, but when you're finished, you may have to read several of my books and watch a lot of TV just to get stupid enough to function in the modern world again.”

“Adeline had come to Christianity the same way she had come to sex and smoking:through peer pressure.Thinking about her six kids and her smoker's hack, she wondered if perhaps peer pressure didn't always lead to the best habits.”

“They want to be tied up, I tie them up. They want to be spanked, I spank them. They want to be called names, I call them names. But try and drink a little of their blood, and they scream like babies. What about my needs?”

“The woman raised her voice. "I said, what are you doing?"Tommy kept typing and looked up. "Pardon me, I was ignoring you. What did you say?""What are you doing?" She repeated."It's a note. Let me read it for you. 'Couldn't anyone else see that they were all slaves of Satan? I had to cleanse the world of their evil. I am the hand of God. Why else would security have let me into the building with an assault rifle in my suitcase? I am a divine instrument.' " Tommy paused and looked up. "That's all I have so far, but I'll guess I end it with an apology to my mom. What do you think?"She smiled as if hiding gas pains and handed him an envelope.”

“One Monday, just for sport, Charlie grabbed an eggplant that a spectacularly wizened granny was going for, but instead of twisting it out of his hand with some mystic kung fu move as he expected, she looked him in the eye and shook her head - just a jog, barely perceptible really - it might have been a tic, but it was the most eloquent of gestures. Charlie read it as saying: O White Devil, you do not want to purloin that purple fruit, for I have four thousand years of ancestors and civilization on you; my grandparents built the railroads and dug the silver mines, and my parents survived the earthquake, the fire, and a society that outlawed even being Chinese; I am mother to a dozen, grandmother to a hundred, and great-grandmother to a legion; I have birthed babies and washed the dead; I am history and suffering and wisdom; I am a Buddha and a dragon; so get your fucking hand off my eggplant before you lose it.”