“Mother, you have my father much offended.”

“You poor lonely boy,' she cried, 'it's so dreadful for you to have no parents.'Well, as my mother was a whore, and my father a drunk, I daresay I don't miss much.”

“You can hit my father over the head with a chair and he won't wake up, but my mother, all you have to do to my mother is cough somewhere in Siberia and she'll hear you.”

“My mother and Joe have a lovers' shorthand, an economy of gestures that comes when you are close enough to someone to speak their language. I wonder if my mother and father ever had that, or if my mother was always just trying to decipher him.”

“My father and mother did not think they should have brought a superintendent into the world.”

“What's going on? Not much. My mother's falling to pieces, my sister is a selfish bitch and my father's committing slow suicide for sake of his kingdom. That's all.”