“Be careful what you get good at doin', cuz you'll be doin' it for the rest of your life.”

“There are two things you should never do with your father: learn how to drive and learn how to kill a chicken.”

“I am often slow in catching up to the times, but even so, I still cannot even grip this idea: With nothing more than pitocin in your IV drip, you can sooner control the date and time of the birth of a human being-- the gushing entry into the great blue world of a whole new person-- than you can the scheduling of a few line cooks in your operation.”

“I was purely content to sit in the car and wander around my own mind. Watching the world itself, the people in it, and my whole internal life was more than enough to keep me entertained.”

“...as soon as I saw the three-bin stainless steel pot sink, exactly like ours, I felt instantly at home and fell into peeling potatoes and scraping plates for the dishwasher like it was my own skin. And that, just like that, is how a whole life can start.”

“It's hard to cook for kids, and when something doesn't appeal to them, instead of saying a polite no thank you, they instead break into a giant yuk face and shriek "eewww" right in front of you, as if you had no feelings at all.”

“Each housing development has a "country" name - Squirrel Valley, Pine Ridge, Eagle crossing, Deer Path, which has an unkind way of invoking and recalling the very things demolished when building.”