“Ah. Alicia, see? Didn't I tell you that's what she needed to begin with? Maybe a little schtupping and it would make the cancer go away. It works with pimples.''Nana!”

“Get used to that, Nana. He has a way of appearing out of thin air.''Oh my. Asher. Hm. Hm. Hm. Turn around. He's beautiful, Campbell. Are you schtupping my granddaughter?' she asked him.'No, ma'am.''Well, I give you my permission.'And just liked that, Cam's love life was ruined forever. If and when she ever 'schtupped' Asher, she'd have to do everything she could not to think of her grandmotehr.”

“Beauty didn't seem to be a priority for people anymore. If you had to judge by I-95, America had become a cancerous clusters of cheap houses, replicating out of control...People just needed places to collect their stuff.”

“And you stole my underwear,' Nana added. 'What did you want with my underwear?”

“You cannot conceive of the depths of my sorrow, Campbell Maria Cooper." Alicia brought her fist to her mouth and her other hand to the rail of the bed and took a deep breath before she continued. "I will never be the same when you are gone. Things for me will be dim and gray and flat. But there is one thing that will keep me going, Campbell, and that is the belief in my connection to you. This thing. This crazy enmeshed love feeling that I have is real. Like this cup is real. Or this phone is real. And it will not just go away when you do. Okay? Wherever you are going, you will be connected to me by this thing, and you will never, ever be alone, okay? I want you to know that.”

“Cam lifted the back of the U-Haul door to find Perry holding up a pair of Nana's enormous, silky white underpants.'Whoops,' said Cam. 'You'll have to make do.' And she shut the door, ignoring Perry's continued pounding on the side of the trailer.'I packed some cute stuff for her, too,' Asher said regretfully.”

“People keep talking about this unfolding. I can't trust the unfolding, okay? If there is some higher power making origami out of the universe, it hates my guts. I was a fat kid whose parents got divorced, whose father died, and then who got cancer herself. So no. I don't trust how things are going to unfold.”