“I haven’t seen Joel for a while. Where he once projected all laidback cool, now he’s edgy, stalking around the kitchen. Alice churns out pancakes and the younger kids sit at the table, watching as if their older siblings are Nickelodeon.”

“Like all our memories, we like to take it out once in a while and lay it flat on the kitchen table, the way my wife does with her sewing patterns, where we line up the shape of our lives against that which we thought it would be by now.”

“He’s sitting casually at my kitchen table peeling the skin off an applewith a pocket knife, a red apple that he has quite obviously appropriated from my fruit bowl, might I add.”

“Gogol remembers having to do the same thing when he was younger, when his grandparents died...He remembers, back then, being bored by it, annoyed at having to observe a ritual no one else he knew followed, in honor of people he had seen only a few times in his life...Now, sitting together at the kitchen table at six-thirty every evening, his father's chair empty, this meatless meal is the only thing that seems to make sense.”

“He looked at Chloe "Come over to the table. Sit with your aunt. I will clear away the mess and....I will achieve pancakes."Grace's lovely, tired face wobbled with looked suspiciously like mirth, but she had been under so much stress he decided his first impression could not be correct."You'll achieve pancakes?""I do not see why not" he said"Have you ever achieved them before?" she said"That question is irrelevant," he told her, while his eyes narrowed in suspicion on her tired face. On a Djinn, her expression would definitely be laughter. "I will achieve pancakes now.”

“He’s playing every bit as hard as I am, only he knows what he’s doing and I don’t. Don’t blame me because he’s a better manipulator than I am — I haven’t been around long enough to learn all his tricks.”