“Let this ground be seeded with salt, so that no stalk of corn, or stalk of wheat shall ever grow. Cursed be the children of this ground, and cursed be their loins. Also cursed be their hams and hocks. Hail Marry full of grace, let us blow this goddamn place.”

“If your car won't start, curse it ... and be sure you curse it female.”

“Obliqueness is the curse of the reading class.”

“For every mother who ever cursed God for her child dead in the road, for every father who ever cursed the man who sent him away from the factory with no job, for every child who was ever born to pain and asked why, this is the answer. Our lives are like these things I build. Sometimes they fall down for a reason, sometimes they fall down for no reason at all.”

“You know what talent is? The curse of expectation. As a kid you have to deal with that, beat it somehow. If you can write, you think God put you on earth to blow Shakespeare away. Or if you can paint, maybe you think--I did--that God put you on earth to blow your father away.”

“He was in that mostly empty-headed state of grace which is sometimes such fertile soil ; it's the ground from which our brightest dreams and biggest ideas (both good and spectacularly bad) suddenly burst forth, often full-blown.”

“It's your father's fault that the curse got placed and the place got cursed in the first place.”