“She just happens to be my father, young man, and I'd appreciate it of you'd show her a little respect.”

“If I'd been burned alive because of bad grades, my parents would have killed me, especially my father, who meant well but was just a little too gung ho for my taste.”

“You're the man now,' she said to me after my father died, 'you're the man.' Then she turned to Popeye, our calico tom, and said, 'You're the cat now, Popeye, you're the cat,' as if she'd always worn a veil over her face and had never known we were men and cats all along.”

“This grown man who now phones his father to say, "Motherfucker, I ain't seen pussy so long, I'd throw stones at it.”

“What were you asleep? Helen would say as I opened the door. "I've been up since five." In her hand would be aluminum tray covered with foil, either that or a saucepan with a lid on it."Well," I'd tell her, "I didn't go to bed until three.""I didn't go to bed until three thirty."This was how it was with her: If you got fifteen minutes of sleep, she got only ten. If you had a cold, she had the flu. If you'd dodged a bullet, she'd dodged five. Blindfolded. After my mother's funeral, I remember her greeting me with "So what? My mother died when I was half your age.""Gosh," I said. "Thing of everything she missed."pgs. 86-87”

“Three days after that, the funeral was held, and while riding from the church to the cemetery Ava looked out the widow and noticed that everyone she passed was crying. "Old people, college students, even the colored men at the gas station-- the soul brothers, or whatever we're supposed to call them now."It was such an outdated term, I just had to use it myself. "How did the soul brothers know your father?""That's just it," she said. "No one told us until after the burial that Kennedy had been shot. It happened when we were in the church, so that's what everyone was so upset about. The president, not my father.”

“College is the best thing that can ever happen to you," my father used to say, and he was right, for it was there that I discovered drugs, drinking, and smoking..”