“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.''

'Daddy, how many whoppers are there in those tall trees?' After waking up in the car while driving through Calaveras Big Trees and hearing daddy say, 'Wow, that's a whopper of a tree.'

Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.

All I am, or can be, I owe to my angel mother.

'Divorce is when mommy and daddy yell at each other then they spread apart. Then they put up a 'for sale' sign in front of the house and they spread farther and farther apart until they can't come back ever again and it's very sad.' (teaching her 4-year old brother)