“Dad had a sign of his own. MY BEAUTIFUL FAMILY, it read, and then underneath that (AND GUS).”

“I got up and hugged first his dad and then his mom, who held on to me too tight, like Gus used to, squeezing my shoulder blades.”

“Don’t forget the chocolate fudge frosting!”“Gotcha,” Dad shouted back.“Good to know, even after a family drama, Gwen’s still hard at work on that great ass,” Gus noted.”

“My family never went skiing. My dad was afraid of heights and my mom felt that a vacation was only a vacation if it involved reading at least two books on the beach.”

“Dad used to read aloud to us from Dickens and Kipling. My tastes were omnivorous. I read anything I could lay my hands on, but the memory that stays with me is that of my father reading the Jungle Books to us when we were young. Beautiful stories!”

“Gus: "It tastes like..."Me: "Food."Gus: "Yes, precisely. It tastes like food, excellently prepared. But it does not taste, how do I put this delicately...?"Me: "It does not taste like God Himself cooked heaven into a series of five dishes which were then served to you accompanied by several luminous balls of fermented, bubbly plasma while actual and literal flower petals floated down around your canal-side dinner table."Gus: "Nicely phrased."Gus's father: "Our children are weird."My dad: "Nicely phrased.”