“I don't think she [Mother] likes doing the laundry," I said. It was actually the first time in my life that I'd really thought about it - about what she did once a week, every week, all our lives. I suddenly felt very sorry for her. At the same time, I wondered what it would be like to never again have clean clothes.”

“He [Pat] pushed a little wheat onto the edge of the shovel, then swung the thing around with such sudden force that the wheat might have actually made it onto the truck, if only he hadn't let go of the shovel. But he did let go of it, and it went sailing through the air like a silver spaceship until my forehead stopped it."You've killed me!" I cried. I slipped down onto the pile of wheat, blinking wildly and clutching at my wounded forehead."I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" he shouted.I felt quite numb all over, as if I weren't really there."I see three angels with golden trumpets," I informed him.At this point he began to blubber."Don't die!" he cried."It's too late. I responded. "You've killed me, and now I'm going to die."They'll probably hang you," I added as an afterthought.”

“The movie was Son of Frankenstein, and there was a Gene Autry film along with it. I liked the Frankenstein movie. I liked all Frankenstein movies. But as for Gene Autry, I never liked him very much. He had a bad habit of pulling out his guitar and singing, right in the middle of the movie.”

“Another one says she has asnap-off crotch. What do you think she means by that? I'm a little worried,though, about all these outbreaks of lifestyle diseases. I carry a reinforced ribbed condom at all times. One size fits all. But I have a feeling it's not much protection against the intelligence and adaptability of the modern virus.”

“Meghan and I talked about music - she loved Ella Fitzgerald. "What about all the hip acts that college kids love? Do you like any of them?""Like who?""I don't know all their names. Snoop Diggity Do and all those hip cats." Meghan shook her head and laughed. We talked about movies - she loved anything made before 1964. No wonder I thought she was older; she was an old soul in a young body."So what's your favorite movie?" I asked."To Kill a Mockingbird." My mother would have liked Meghan. She made my father and me watch To Kill a Mockingbird with her when I was in first grade. It must have been the twentieth time she'd seen it, but she still cried at the parts that made her weepy-eyed the first nineteen times.”

“Who knows what I want to do? Who knows what anyone wants to do? How can you be sure about something like that? Isn't it all a question of brain chemistry, signals going back and forth, electrical energy in the cortex? How do you know whether something is really what you want to do or just some kind of nerve impulse in the brain? Some minor little activity takes place somewhere in this unimportant place in one of the brain hemispheres and suddenly I want to go to Montana or I don't want to go to Montana. How do I know I really want to go and it isn't just some neurons firing or something? Maybe it's just an accidental flash in the medulla and suddenly there I am in Montana and I find out I really didn't want to go there in the first place. I can't control what happens in my brain, so how can I be sure what I want to do ten seconds from now, much less Montana next summer? It's all this activity in the brain and you don't know what's you as a person and what's some neuron that just happens to fire or just happens to misfire.”

“Don't you find it strange that your mother would leave you?' Becky said. 'I can't imagine my other leaving me.'I'd never thought of it like that before. 'I don't think she knew what else to do.”