“An advertising man understands even more viscerally than an academic that the world is made of discourse, Pescecane argued; he understands in his bones that true power resides in the infinite manipulability of signs.”

“The only distinguishing characteristic of a literature professor at the millennium was that he or she wrote about other people's writing. Apart from that, the writing he wrote about didn't even need to be literature, or writing about literature, or even writing about writing about literature. He needed theory...In the unflickering glare, at the center of a severe perspective, Nelson suddenly felt the visceral truth of the world as text; he apperceived the fundamentally linguistic nature of reality. Everything was text, at every level of existence, all the way up from quarks to queer theory. Words arranged in lines; lines arrayed on pages; pages pressed together, bound, and trimmed in books; books arranged cover to cover along a shelf like the words in a line of text; shelves stacked one atop the other like lines of text on a page; rows of shelves pressed together, with just the barest passage for the reader, like the pages of a book.”

“A Michigander can be every bit as prickly as a New Yorker, just not out loud. The Midwesterner’s credo: keep it to yourself.”

“As Amani frantically diced the ingredients for her Pan seared Mahi-Mahi with Mango Salsa, she recalled her first meeting with him during a class he taught on the presentation of food and organization the previous year. Amani had been immediately drawn to the tall, serious Californian, and not just because of his looks. With dark wavy hair, strong features and the deepest blue eyes she had ever seen short of Paul Newman’s, David Spencer was everything Amani admired in a man, and then some.http://omadisonpress.com/romance/all-...”

“You can serve high tea around the dining room table, but afternoon tea is more of a living room occasion, with everything brought in on a tray or a cart.”

“As a first-generation Ethiopian immigrant, Sheba had lived in Charleston since she turned five years of age. She was Ethiopian by birth, but American by preference. She had worked hard, studied and sacrificed plenty to get where she was today, no easy feat for someone who had just celebrated her twenty-sixth birthday. According to her friends, Sheba was a beauty, though when she looked in the mirror, she saw inevitable flaws; her cheekbones were too pronounced, her mouth a little too wide, her nose with that perturbing slant to it. Still, she accepted compliments gratefully, especially from her roommate, Janelle. Janelle was the true beauty, Sheba thought, with dark ebony skin so smooth that she could be a walking ad for Ghirardelli Dark Chocolate.”

“The hour [...] can be anywhere between three and six o'clock in the afternoon. The general rule is that the earlier tea is served, the lighter the refreshments. At three, tea is usually a snack -- dainty finger sandwiches, petits fours, fresh strawberrries; at six, it can be a meal -- or "high" tea -- with sausage rolls, salads, and trifle.”