“I do not give a rat's front teeth about decorum right now," my father enunciated clearly and loudly. "I have a hole in my side! Have you not noticed?”

“For a moment, I was captivated as I studied them side by side. My mother: the perfect picture of guardian excellence and decorum. My father: always capable of achieving his goals, no matter how twisted the means. Uneasily, I began to understand how I’d inherited my bizarre personality.”

“I nearly ran him over after he ran out in front of my car. So I slammed on the brakes, rolled down my window, and said, “Do you realize I could have killed you?” “It was stupid of me to run out in front of you,” he said. “Yeah, it was,” I replied. “But I’m not talking about now. Last Tuesday I could have killed you. Had you in the scope of my rifle, but I let you live. Now THAT was stupid.”

“...I knew at times I have a loud chirp for such a petite bird, a chirp that some think is slanted, opinionated, and way too unladylike coming from a mouth as prim-looking as mine. Until I open it and the space between my two front teeth shoes. It's the space that everyone blames for my outspokenness, and although my parents don't really believe it, they use it, too. Whenever I say things that embarrass them, they're the first to tell people, 'It's that space between her two front teeth. Things just slip out of it, and she can't help it. We don't know what to do about it.”

“I have an old hat which is not worth three francs, I have a coat which lacks buttons in front, my shirt is all ragged, my elbows are torn, my boots let in the water; for the last six weeks I have not thought about it, and I have not told you about it. You only see me at night, and you give me your love; if you were to see me in the daytime, you would give me a sou!”

“I just believed it easily, the way you might believe and in fact remember that you once had another set of teeth, now vanished but real in spite of that. Until one day, one day when I may even have been in my teens, I knew with a dim sort of hole in my insides that now I didn't believe it anymore.”