“Mrs. Spock:He's in his 80's nowHis face is showing his ageNot quite the trim figureThat he had on the old showBut I've grown older too,Wider, and more creaky bonesAnd "Bones" has travelled onBut, still, "Live long and prosper!"Back when I was littleWas always Mrs. Spock whenEver we played "Star Trek"With my sisters, as a child”

“My Uriah,' said Mrs. Heep, 'has looked forward to this, sir, a long while. He had his fears that our umbleness stood in the way, and I joined in them myself. Umble we are, umble we have been, umble we shall ever be,' said Mrs. Heep.”

“Morley joined them, and after a long, uncomfortable moment, Mrs. Grant decided to ignore his presence. Theguards didn’t. Their knuckles were white on their weapons.May I assist?” he asked, and put his hands behind his back. “I promise not to eat anyone.”Very funny,” Mrs. Grant said. Morley gave her a grave look.I wasn’t joking, dear lady,” he said. “I do promise. And I never make a promise I don’t intend to keep. Youshould feel quite secure.”Well, I’m sorry, I don’t,” she said. “You’re just—”Too overwhelmingly dashing and attractive?” Morley grinned. “A common problem women face with me.It’ll pass. You seem like the no-nonsense sort. I like that.”Claire smiled at the look on Mrs. Grant’s face, reflected in the white LED light of the lantern she was holding.You are really—odd,” the older woman said, as if she couldn’t quite believe she was even having theconversation.”

“Chang-bo took to his bed, or rather to the quilts on the floor that was all they had left. His legs swelled up like balloons with what Mrs. Song had come to recognize as edema — fluid retention brought on by starvation. He talked incessantly about food. He spoke of the tofu soups his mother made him as a child and an unusually delicious meal of steamed crab with ginger that Mrs. Song had cooked for him when they were newlyweds. He had an uncanny ability to remember details of dishes she had cooked decades earlier. He was sweetly sentimental, even romantic, when he spoke about their meals together. He would take her hand in his own, his eyes wet and cloudy with the mist of his memories.“Come, darling. Let’s go to a good restaurant and order a nice bottle of wine,” he told his wife one morning when they were stirring on the blankets. They hadn’t eaten in three days. Mrs. Song looked at her husband with alarm, worried that he was hallucinating.She ran out the door to the market, moving fast and forgetting all about the pain in her back. She was determined to steal, beg — whatever it took — to get some food for her husband. She spotted her older sister selling noodles. Her sister wasn’t faring well — her skin was flaked just like Chang-bo’s from malnutrition — so Mrs. Song had resisted asking her for help, but now she was desperate, and of course, her sister couldn’t refuse.“I’ll pay you back,” Mrs. Song promised as she ran back home, the adrenaline pumping her legs.Chang-bo was curled up on his side under the blanket. Mrs. Song called his name. When he didn’t respond, she went to turn him over — it wasn’t diffcult now that he had lost so much weight, but his legs and arms were stiff and got in the way.Mrs. Song pounded and pounded on his chest, screaming for help even as she knew it was too late.”

“He pulled to the side and saw, to his chagrin, that Mrs. Prince of the $2,100 bill at the Star Store was just leaving. She waved at him merrily and grinned and Seth waved back gamely. He wondered how Ralph had reacted to the news that his grandson had managed to screw up running the Star Store’s cash register. He could easily imagine Mrs. Prince’s words: “Ralph, I hate to ask, but can that boy even count?”

“The word impossible contains the word possible'What's that-- some Zen thing?'I think Star Trek. Mr. Spock.”