“Troo's a little in front of me bouncing a red rubber ball that she 'borrowed' from the playground shed. She's warming up to play that A my name is Annie and I come from Alabama with a carload of apples game. When she gets to the letter f, her name will be Fifi and she will come from where else but France. I refuse to repeat what she will have a carload of.”

“The dog, who had sounded so ferocious in the winter distances, was a female German Shepherd. She was shivering. Her tail was between her legs. She had been borrowed that morning from a farmer. She had never been to war before. She had no idea what game was being played. Her name was Princess.”

“We go on in her room, where we like to set. I get up in the big chair and she get up on me and smile, bounce a little. "Tell me bout the brown wrapping. And the present." She so excited, she squirming. She has to jump off my lap, squirm a little to get it out. Then she crawl back up. That's her favorite story cause when I tell it, she get two presents. I take the brown wrapping from my Piggly Wiggly grocery bag and wrap up a little something, like piece a candy, inside. Then I use the white paper from my Cole's Drug Store bag and wrap another one just like it. She take it real serious, the unwrapping, letting me tell the story bout how it ain't the color a the wrapping that count, it's what we is inside.”

“You called her Kitten? And she let you? She put me in a coma for three days when I called her that? My balls never recovered from her smashing them into my spine?" "And well she should have," Bones agreed. "She's my Kitten, and no one else's”

“My name is Bis,” he said, “and I was kicked off the basilica because I was spitting on the people coming in. Suck-up little Glissando thinks she knows angel dust from dirt and tattled on me.”

“I remember when my daughter was just learning her letters. She was playing in her room and came downstairs to ask me, “Momma, what does C-H-I-N-A spell?” “China,” I told her (she knew what the word meant—she had friends from there). “So,” she asked next, “why is it written on everything?”