“It doesn't seem to matter what we think...The prince will come up here and look at us as if we're barrels in a trader's wagon. And if I'm salt pork and he doesn't care for salt pork, then there's nothing I can do.”

“Ever consider what pets must think of us? I mean, here we come back from a grocery store with the most amazing haul - chicken, pork, half a cow. They must think we're the greatest hunters on earth!”

“You should have seen the things they were giving babies instead of milk. I remember seeing them put salt-pork gravy in milk bottles and putting a nipple on, and the baby sucking this salt-pork gravy. A real blue baby, dying of starvation. In house after house, I saw that sort of thing.”

“What kind of a house doesn't have salt? Low sodium freaks!”

“There's a small balcony here, the door is open and I can see the lights ofthe cars on the Harbor Freeway south, they never stop, that roll of lights, on and on.All those people. What are they doing? What are they thinking? We're allgoing to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't.”

“And it really doesn't matter if we're under our desks with our hands over our heads or not, does it? No, said Mrs. Baker. It doesn't really matter. So, why are we practicing? She thought for a minute. Because it gives comfort, she said. People like to think that if they're prepared then nothing bad can really happen. And perhaps we practice because we feel as if there's nothing else we can do because sometimes it feels as if life is governed by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.”