“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I look forward all day to evening, and then I put an "engaged" on the door and get into my nice red bath robe and furry slippers and pile all the cushions behind me on the couch, and light the brass student lamp at my elbow, and read and read and read. One book isn't enough. I have four going at once. Just now, they're Tennyson's poems and "Vanity Fair" and Kipling's "Plain Tales" and - don't laugh - "Little Women." I find that I am the only girl in college who wasn't brought up on "Little Women." I haven't told anybody though (that would stamp me as queer). I just quietly went and bought it with $1.12 of my last month's allowance; and the next time somebody mentions pickled limes, I'll know what she is talking about!”