All of his life had been about making sure I kept mine.

At least that's what his note said, along with a scathing reminder that dishes didn't wash themselves and the fungus in the bathroom was one day away from evolving into sentient life. I folded the note into an airplane and sailed it across the room. It ended up perched jauntily on top of the ancient television. It looked good there and I left it as a tribute to freedom-loving fungi everywhere.

Pick up your clothes. I am not your maid. How do I know this? A maid cannot kill you with a tube sock. I can.

People--stupid when they lived; potentially stupid when they died.

When life gives you lemons. . . You might as well shove 'em where the sun don't shine, because you sure as hell aren't ever going to see any lemonade.

All I cared was that she had never lied. She was honest in a world just the opposite, and a cool oasis in my life. She was who she said she was, and everything Sophia, my mother, the pathologically manipulative liar, had never been.

They don't have to choose either/or. They can have their cake and mutilate it too.