“I respect every way in which you are a troublemaker, now get up and do what your mother says.”

“She might say: “This mess will clear up if you take that troublemaker there — What’s your name? You, with the goatee — out and shoot him. Do it now.”--Glory Road; Heinlein”

“Mother, father, there is no passing the cup. I want to be a troublemaker when I grow up.”

“All I can think about is how fucked up it would be for your life to end here, now. I mean I know that your life if fucked up no matter what now, forever. And I'm not dumb enough to think that I can undo that, that anyone can. But I can't wrap my mind around the notion of you not getting old, having kids, going to Juilliard, getting to play that cello in front of a huge audience, so that they can get the chills the way I do every time I see you pick up your bow, every time I see you smile at me.”

“What was I thinking? Of all the assistants I could have wound up with, why did I have to choose the one with the scary mother and troublemaking in his bloodlines? I am doomed.”

“It's for personal reasons," I say stiffly, which is what my mother had always told me to say about things that had to do with fighting with your brothers, getting any sort of illness that had intestinal ramifications, starting your period, and money.”