"When she stood, though, she projected physical power and moral authority."
Chap. 3, p. 28

"The timelessness of it: Nothing new had been said on that porch for a hundred years."
Chap. 4, p. 44

"While I was experiencing the routine miseries of childhood, my mother was discovering the Depression."
Chap. 6, p. 75

"If I had lived upstairs with the landlady I would probably have become a hard-money Republican, but chance had put me on the lower level where the Depression stirred such passion that even a child could not resist."
Chap. 7, p. 93

"Most likely she didn't actually hate my friends because they were Italian; she was probably just angry at me for choosing friends who couldn't pass muster in the world of people who had made something of themselves." —Chapter 9, page 128

"To me he was the man playing Parcheesi and drinking cocoa in a two-room flat so close to H.L...