“They've drunk everything in the house, including a pitcher of African violet plant food I'd just mixed up and was stupid enough to leave on the counter."Tremaine punched Eddie in the shoulder. "I told you it tasted weird."Eddie shrugged. "Tasted okay to me.”

“That's where you come in. I want into that guy's mind, and you need to tell me how to do it."Ad shrugged. "Personally, I'd just use a hacksaw, but—""There are potential consequences and side effects," Eddie said carefully."Like what?""Well, worst case... he could end up like Adrian.”

“I'm sure Uncle Eddie won't kill him. He'll probably just maim him a little.""No," Uncle Eddie said. "I won't.""Okay," Gabrielle said. "So he'll maim him a lot. But Hale can take it.”

“I’m losing my taste for everything, including even my taste for finding everything tasteless.”

“Up until then I'd thought that white people and colored people getting along was the big aim, but after that I decided everybody being colorless together was a better plan. I thought of that policeman, Eddie Hazelwurst, saying I'd lowered myself to be in this house of colored women, and for the very life of me I couldn't understand how it had turned out this way, how colored women had become the lowest ones on the totem pole. You only had to look at them to see how special they were, like hidden royalty among us. Eddie Hazelwurst. What a shitbucket.”

“Gus: "It tastes like..."Me: "Food."Gus: "Yes, precisely. It tastes like food, excellently prepared. But it does not taste, how do I put this delicately...?"Me: "It does not taste like God Himself cooked heaven into a series of five dishes which were then served to you accompanied by several luminous balls of fermented, bubbly plasma while actual and literal flower petals floated down around your canal-side dinner table."Gus: "Nicely phrased."Gus's father: "Our children are weird."My dad: "Nicely phrased.”