“You wanna tell me, sweetness, how dessert for seventeen people translates into seven pies and two cakes?” Brock asked.”

“I'm seventeen and I'm crazy. My uncle says the two always go together. When people ask your age, he said, always say seventeen and insane.”

“How about this?' Simmon asked me. "Which is worse, stealing a pie or killing Ambrose?"I gave it a moment's hard thought. "A meat pie, or a fruit pie?”

“Easy as cake.""Pie.""Yeah. I can't make pie. My cousin got all the baking genes, but if it comes out of a box and has very detailed instructions, I can make an edible cake. Cake is easy. Pie's a bitch.”

“Such heaped up platters of cakes of various and almost indescribable kinds, known only to experienced Dutch housewives! There was the doughty doughnut, the tender oly koek, and the crisp and crumbling cruller; sweet cakes and short cakes, ginger cakes and honey cakes, and the whole family of cakes. And then there were apple pies, and peach pies, and pumpkin pies; besides slices of ham and smoked beef; and moreover delectable dishes of preserved plums, and peaches, and pears, and quinces; not to mention broiled shad and roasted chickens; together with bowls of milk and cream, all mingled higgledy-piggledy, pretty much as I have enumerated them, with the motherly teapot sending up its clouds of vapor from the midst-- Heaven bless the mark!”

“The only way cheese is dessert is when it's followed by the word cake.”