“On a sticky August evening two weeks before her due date, Ashima Ganguli stands in the kitchen of a Central Square apartment, combining Rice Krispies and Planters peanuts and chopped red onion in bowl.”

“Though no longer pregnant, she continues, at times, to mix Rice Krispies and peanuts and onions in a bowl. For being a foreigner Ashima is beginning to realize, is a sort of lifelong pregnancy -- a perpetual wait, a constant burden, a continuous feeling out of sorts. It is an ongoing responsibility, a parenthesis in what had once been an ordinary life, only to discover that previous life has vanished, replaced by something more complicated and demanding. Like pregnancy, being a foreigner, Ashima believes, is something that elicits the same curiosity of from strangers, the same combination of pity and respect.”

“normal person's weekly chore list:1. clean kitchen.2. clean bathroom.3. clean entire rest of domicile.cleaning impaired person's weekly chore list: 1. don't get peanut butter on sheets.”

“Lucy settled into August's kitchen as if they were a family.”

“Magrat had used a lot of powder to make her face pale and interesting. It combined with the lavishly applied mascara to give the guard the impression that he was looking at two flies that had crashed into a sugar bowl.”

“People such as Blur's Alex James make too much of a fuss about champagne, just because it pops and it's fizzy and golden. Big deal. Rice Krispies do exactly the same”