“Hearing him talk about his mother, about his intact family, makes my chest hurt for a second, like someone pierced it with a needle.”

“People never like to talk about their slower relatives. I got a cousin, twice removed, got webs between his toes, ain't said one word his whole life. You never hear about him in the family newsletter that goes around every Christmas. Hell, nobody mentions me, either, if it comes to that. Families is funny about who they advertise.”

“It is enough for me to hear someone talk sincerely about ideals, about the future, about philosophy, to hear him say “we" with a certain inflection of assurance, to hear him invoke "others" and regard himself as their interpreter - for me to consider him my enemy.”

“To talk about God, except in the context of prayer, is to take His name in vain.One may, indeed, talk to a child about God, but this is on a par with telling him that he was brought to his mother by a stork.”

“Did this mean if I told May about T. Ray's mounds of grits, his dozens of small cruelties, about my killing my mother--that hearing it, she would feel everything I did? I wanted to know what happened when two people felt it. Would it divide the hurt in two, make it lighter to bear, the way feeling someone's joy seemed to double it?”

“Talk about getting off tangent. My mother's friend may have just killed his wife and my parents are sitting there talking about cows.”