The thought of killing myself had slowed me down to five miles per hour. The thought of killing someone else stopped me completely.

You're the man now,' she said to me after my father died, 'you're the man.' Then she turned to Popeye, our calico tom, and said, 'You're the cat now, Popeye, you're the cat,' as if she'd always worn a veil over her face and had never known we were men and cats all along.

The woman spoke with a heavy western North Carolina accent, which I used to discredit her authority. Here was a person for whom the word 'pen' had two syllables. He people undoubtedly drank from clay jugs and hollered for Paw when the vittles were ready-- so who was she to advise me on anything?

People in trailers were canned and labeled much like the apple juice down at the plant, stamped with ingredients for all the world to see: chicken fried steak, overcooked vegetables, no working knowledge of any major Italian movie directors--the list went on and on.

There seemed to be some correlation between devotion to God and a misguided zeal for marshmallows.

I'd tried to straighten him out, but there's only so much you can do for a person who thinks Auschwitz is a brand of beer.