“She’d passed sentence on God two years ago, and she fed her doubts of Him daily, taking care they didn’t shrivel and die.”

“When my mother passed away several years ago—well, wait a minute. Actually, she didn’t ‘pass away.’ She died. Something about that verb, ‘to pass away’ always sounds to me as if someone just drifted through the wallpaper. No, my mother did not pass away. She definitely died.”

“She had born a child but two hours ago. She was so weak that she couldn't lift her head an inch from the pillow, yet it was she who comforted him and told him not to worry, that she would take care of him.”

“For the first time in twenty-two years after the jaw tilt, Feb didn’t take her eyes off him. And for the first time in twenty-two years, he gave her a smile.”

“Two years ago your father died, Ulysses. But as long as we are alive, as long as we are together, as long as two of us are left, and remember him, nothing in the world can take him from us.”

“He had to admit: She’d got to him. This demure second-grade schoolteacher, who’d been faithful to her husband, but who had fucked him with the same fervor with which she’d fought him two days ago, had crawled under his mean ol’ hide.”