“In the book, hummin bins made castles, and towers up to the sky. They tamed the animals and took care of them. And hummin bins helped each other. They were always good."When I was done, Ma asked, 'Delly, what are hummin bins?' 'They're like people, but better,' I said. Then I told her, 'When I grow up, I'm going to live with the hummin bins,' and she smiled."But Galveston grabbed the book, 'Let me see that,' she said, and started laughing. 'This says human beings. There's no such things as hummin bins.'"'Ma, is it true?' I asked, and she nodded. 'How come you didn't tell me?' I cried."'I liked the hummin bins better, too,' she said." ..."RB's right, Ferris Boyd. You are a hummin bin." Her eyeballs were wet, like they were swimming.It was quiet, then, till RB's soft cloud voice said, "You're a hummin bin, too, Delly.”

“It wasn't till they were on the bridge that Delly asked RB, "So, Ferris Boyd's your favorite?" She didn't mind, mostly.RB answered so fast, though, she knew he wasn't fibbing. "She's my favorite friend," he told her. "You're my favorite everything.”

“[He] went on to tell her that certain work songs made the work a little easier, but that there were others, depending upon the time of day, that dragged a body down, so 'you just gotta be careful with your songs and your hummin' and whatnot.”

“Then I looked right at Mama, for the first time in what seemed like forever, and she wasn't looking at me, but into me. She was pulling me to her with her eyes, like she used to do. All of a sudden I could see the light that was Mama's shining out of her eyes. I couldn't help smiling at it.'Be careful,' my heart warned me.But I was having a hard time remembering that there as anything to be careful about. Because if I just looked at Mama's eyes...I could tell that the part of her I thought had gone away forever was still there and glowing, only from deep down inside her.”

“We are all a little weird. And we like to think that there is always someone weirder. I mean, I am sure some of you are looking at me and thinking, “Well, at least I am not as weird as you,” and I am thinking, “Well, at least I am not as weird as the people in the loony bin,” and the people in the loony bin are thinking, “Well, at least I am an orange”.”

“I looked at her and she looked at me and we weren’t walking. We were just standing there, and her eyes were so interesting. Not in the usual way of being interesting, like the extremely blue or extremely big of flanked by obscenely long lashes or anything. What interested me about the Duke’s eyes was the complexity of the color- she always said they looked like the bottom of trash-can bins, a swirl of green and brown and yellow but she was underselling herself she always undersold herself. Christ it was hard to unthink”

“You’re an escapee from the loony bin,” I said. “You’re the butt of every joke ever told. You might as well be the chicken that crossed the road.”