"Most of my friends are motley, antisocial, deranged, semialcoholic, and black-humored, each one stranger than the last." (Ch.1, The Family, p. 3)

"I was drinking more slowly than Ben, and had felt happier just seeing the whiskey, which may be one of the ten warning signs of alcoholism, this and my conviction that I wouldn't want to live in a world without alcohol." (Ch. 1, The Family, p. 15)

"She has a strange sense of humor: nothing amuses her more than an especially poignant memorial service." (Ch. 2, The Town Where I Live, p. 33)

"He found our gallows humor to be a good sign of something, perhaps the survival instinct." (Ch. 4, Gatherings, p. 60)

"Watching Westerns as a child, I thought that outlaws who were shot on television were, in real life, criminals who chose to die on television rather than be gassed." (Ch. 4, Gatherings, p. 66)

"I knew by ten years old that...