“Are you ready to take the ACT on Saturday?" my father asked.Did chickens enjoy being put on trucks labeled KFC? "Sure.”

“My father was missing some very important meeting, and my stepmother from Oz? I'm sure she was missing her brain.”

“My father was a strange combination of drill instructor and Alice’s white rabbit: he always had someplace important to go and enjoyed bossing everyone else around.”

“I could teach you to drive if you 're ready to admit you don't know how.”

“She gave me the same smile I'd seen on Saturday night. That type of smile caused men to write those pussy-ass songs that Isaiah and I made fun of. I'd sit in Mrs. Collins's office for hours and wake my ass up early to go to calculus in order to see that smile again.”

“She'd come home with me to act as my barrier for Family Friday-or as i liked to refer it, Dinner for the Damned.”

“How are you going to react when we 're this close and you take off my shirt? Are you still going to want me when you see red and white lines? Are you going to flinch each time you accidentally touch my arms and feel the raised skin? How about when i touch you?""Or will you forbid that? Will you tell me how to dress or what i'm allowed to take off?”