“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 all around you canal-siide dinner table."Gus: "Nicely phrased"Gus's father: Our children are weird."My dad: "Nicely phrased”

“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.”

“Gus knew. Gus knows. I will not tell you our love story, because—like all real love stories—it will die with us, as it should. I'd hoped that he'd be eulogizing me.”

“It's nice, this. The canal." He looks at me. "You.""I'll bet you say that to all the canals.”

“You ever heard the phrase 'nice guys finish last'? It's true. Been true my whole life. So, maybe it'd be nice for me for a change, if someone thought I was worth fightin' for.”

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