“The drive back to the Mid-fucking-west was always brutal, his parents barely speaking to each other, as if suddenly recalling last year's infidelities, or maybe contemplating whom they'd settle for this year. Sex, if you went by Griffin's parents, definitely took a backseat to real estate on the passion gauge.”

“You don't really understand nature unless you know why a child on a merry-go-round will at his parents each time around - and why his parents will always wave back”

“We’d been back together for four days. I thought that was pretty much the definition of ‘too soon’. Then again, we’d known each other for thirty-nine years and that was undeniably the definition of ‘about fucking time’.”

“Yeah, parents will always fuck you up.”

“When anybody, no matter how old they are, loses a parent, I think it hurts the same as if you were only five years old, you know? I think all of us are always five years old in the presence and absence of our parents.”

“Although my parents never attended church or mentioned Jesus except when they screamed at each other—and then they used his full name, 'Jesus Fucking Christ”