“Don’t quote me on any of this. It’s been a long time since I’ve been test­ed”

“You just don’t know what I’ve been through this past year.”

“We, Brandy and Alfa and me, we've been speaking English as a second language so long that we've forgotten it as our first.I have no native tongue.”

“You get a glass tank, put it where the TV used to be, and all you get is a lizard—something sostupid that every time the maid moves a rock the lizard thinks it’s been relocated miles away.”

“We've been speaking English as a second language so long that we've forgotten it as our first.”

“It’s a fun playtime. Please, don’t kill it with big words.”

“Most people would never admit it, but they'd been bitching since they were born. As soon as their head popped out into that bright delivery-room light, nothing had been right. Nothing had been as comfortable or felt so good. Just the effort it took to keep your stupid physical body alive, just finding food and cooking it and dishwashing, the keeping warm and bathing and sleeping, the walking and bowel movements and ingrown hairs, it was all getting to be too much work.”