“The fork was invented sometime in the fifteenth century, I believe.”“Really?” she asked. “Were you there?”His features blank, he looked up and asked, “What, for the invention of the fork or the fifteenth century?”

“Alarm clocks were invented by fork-tongued devils disguised as gremlins wearing snake masks.”

“The market is not an invention of capitalism. It has existed for centuries. It is an invention of civilization.”

“This had expectations written all over it. Expectations that I was going to fuck up royally because I wasn’t the kind of gal who wore designer nightwear and knew what all the forks were for. I was the kind of gal who thought the nightgown drawer was where old T-shirts went to die and who had only started using forks in the last century.”

“What I have learned since I’ve lived here; Mrs. Smolsky’s potato sacks are able to make you believe that she lives on the fifteenth floor… of a four story building.”

“After Hatuey, a fifteenth-century Indian insurrectionist, had been fixed to the stake, his Spanish captors extended him the choice of converting to Christianity and ascending to Heaven of going unrepentantly to Hell. Gathering that his executioners expected to go to heaven, Hatuey chose the other”