"Mama said the devil's food with angel icing should be a lesson to me about how both bad and good could look pretty and taste sweet. How they could get so mixed up, each with the other, that sometimes you couldn't tell which was which. What a danger those kinds were" (p. 27).

"The roaches have nibbled up all the droppings of icing and cake and on the strength of the sugar have had millions of babies and grandbabies and great-great-grands that stare and scurry when a light is turned on at night. Now that we're gone, all they have to eat is somebody else's nastiness and each other. They've gotten scrawny and mean-spirited. They've grown larger wings" (p. 38).

"I could see my reflection in her eyes, but it wasn't the same girl I saw in my father's eyes, the one with long blond hair that flowed like a...