“His son. That funny creature that looked like a skinned rabbit was his son.”

“Standing amid the tan, excited post-Christmas crowd at the Southwest Florida Regional Airport, Rabbit Angstrom has a funny sudden feeling that what he has come to meet, what's floating in unseen about to land, is not his son Nelson and daughter-in-law Pru and their two children but something more ominous and intimately his: his own death, shaped vaguely like an airplane.”

“I honor the father in his son, not the son in his father. Each one receives a reward or punishment for his deeds, but not for the acts of others.”

“When a father gives to his son, both laugh; when a son gives to his father, both cry.”

“He was the son of his son--he was here, he was left behind.”

“You are your father's daughter,' he said, the skin around his eyes tightening. 'Trent is his father's son. Apart, you are annoying. Together...you have the potential to be a problem.”