“I hear phonetically on the phone. Toiletries sounds like toilet trees to me.”

“A verbal ménage à trois,” Della said.“Gross,” Miranda said.“You wanna hear gross?” Della asked. “I just peed on my hand tryingto piss on this damned drug stick while talking on the phone to you.”Kylie laughed. “I miss you guys.” The sound of a toilet flushing filledthe line.“Oh, double gross,” Miranda snapped. “I told you not to flush while Iwas on the phone.”

“You hear even a hint that a blizzard’s coming, Roxanne Giselle, you go straight to the store and buy toilet paper, you hear me? And make a pot of chili or stew. Don’t get caught out. I don’t want a phone call saying you starved to death, stuck in the house with no stew.”

“If a tree falls in the forest when no one is around to hear it, does it still make a sound?If I scream in the silence, will anyone be around to hear it?”

“At the same time, Dad was working on a book arguing the case for phonetic spelling. He called it 'A Ghoti out of Water.' "Ghoti," he liked to point out, could be pronounced like "fish." The "gh" had the "f" sound in "enough," the "o" had the short "i" sound in "women," and "ti" had the "sh" sound in "nation.”

“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”