“But who could teach daughters how to fly? Parents were by definition earthbound, grub eaters, feet in their own coffins, by dint of being parents.”

“Parents took honor from a daughter who was a teacher.”

“The images I had were of people being driven mad by living in the city. Images of parents who were so hungry and unfulfilled that they ate their own children.”

“The trouble with child training is that parents teach their children not how to behave, but how not to behave.”

“Leah looked at her parents, lost in their own fantasies, and decided that the three of them were a pretty pathetic family - but she wasn't sure who was more pathetic: the dateless girl spending the night of the big dance by herself in her bedroom, or the parents who foolishly believed a boy would arrive on their doorstep with flowers, a limo, and a promise to rescue their daughter from her solitude.”

“What use, Milton, a silly story Of our lost general parents, eaters of fruit?”