“The entire floor teeming with full-humans watching their children skate, all of them hoping to be the breeder of the next gold Olympian.”

“All whispers and echoes from a past that is gone teem into the sleeper's brain, and he is with them, and part of them.”

“Sophie, displaced to the chair next to Lulu, dug her in the side. "Keep him," she whispered. "Nail his foot to the floor if you have to. He's gold.”

“Recommend to your children virtues, that alone can make them happy, not gold.”

“The next time some desperate parents beg me to take care of their children," I raged, sawing at my slice of chicken breast, "I will ask them for a full accounting of all the boxes of cereal in their pantry. And if they don't have at least three types of sugary cereal, then I will say no. No, I will not babysit for your whiny children in your cereal-deprived sham of a household.”

“What I saw next stopped me dead in my tracks. Books. Not just one or two dozen, but hundreds of them. In crates. In piles on the floor. In bookcases that stretched from floor to ceiling and lined the entire room. I turned around and around in a slow circle, feeling as if I'd just stumbled into Ali Baba's cave. I was breathless, close to tears, and positively dizzy with greed.”