“The older Kit gets, the less confident he feels judging other people as spouses or parents. These days, driving past the home of the Naked Hemp Society, he finds himself more curious than contemptu...”

“Ready how? Who's ever ready for anything important?”

“But people, as Alan had once reflected to Greenie, were not at all like recipes. You could have all the right ingredients, in all the right amounts, and still there were no guarantees. Or perhaps t...”

“I guess thats how well you know me. You think I like hearing this news.Im sorry. This is selfish. I just need to tell someone outside my life. Get it out of myhead, to keep from going nuts, but so...”

“I come from a culture of handwringers, vengeance seekers, people who name children after ancestors by rote -- first child, paternal grandfather, second child, maternal, and on and on and on.”

“SWEET POTATO BISQUE WITH CRABMEATGRAPEFRUIT ICE IN A SWEET TORTILLA CRISPLAMB SEARED IN ANCHO CHILI PASTE ON POLENTA TWO CHUTNEYS: PEAR & MINTASPARAGUS FLANAMERICAN GOAT CHEESE, EAST & WEST, WITH R...”

“They call this war a cloud over the land. But they made the weather and then they stand in the rain and say 'Shit, it's raining!”

“Halfway home, the sky goes from dark gray to almost black and a loud thunder snap accompanies the first few raindrops that fall. Heavy, warm, big drops, they drench me in seconds, like an overturne...”

“For the rest of my life, Zanzibar will be the Swahili word for rain. The rain would drizzle, spit, mist, downpour, shower, torrent, gust, deluge and blast. At one point it hit the ground so hard it...”