“It was still very wet under the trees. A careless tug at a branch might flip cold rainbow-edged drops down your back. And the sky was gray as concrete. But they enjoyed the silence, the soft sucking ground matted with last year's needles.”

“Marianne Dashwood looks at gray skies and sees blue. That's all very well, and it's not something you ever want entirely to lose. But you must lose a little of it; otherwise you're going to get wet.”

“After all, your head only had so much room in it. No surprise if it overflowed once in a while with little bits of sparkle and electrical fizz.”

“The danger of sending your children to college was that they would be contaminated by subversive forces, bad influences and bawdy women." Rolled with laughter. Parent's fear, college student's desire.”

“She'd permed her hair to within an inch of its life. When she moved her head, the mass of hair followed along behind her a split second later."Perhaps you had to live through the late 70's, early 80's to appreciate this.”

“She had a heart like a Twinkie, full of oversweet goo, yes, a real junk-food heart.”

“We were afraid of so many things: Of our children, who lived in their own world of casually lurid pleasures, zombies and cartoon killers and thuggish music. Of our neighbors, who were buying gold and ammunition and great quantities of freeze-dried food, and who were organizing themselves into angry tribes recognizable to one another by bumper stickers.”