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"Daughter. Interesting. Stonecipheco Baby Foods. Not a bad line of products, really. A bit soft and runny for my taste, of course. ..."
"Well, it's infant food, really, Norman."
"... but any port in the proverbial storm. Please feel free to sit down."
"Yes and also not only that each of our universes has this feature [...]"
Norman speaking. just noting the stylistic tic
"Lenore, please. Norman, friend, really. A universe-view is one thing. No one can grow to infinite size."
"Has anyone ever tried?"
"Not to my knowledge, no, but ..."
"Then do me a kindness not to shrilly monger finite failure until I've tried. No one had ever been able to give butter life, either, but ..."
"What was that?"
"Nothing. To be ignored. A slip of the tongue."
". . . ."
"Yes and tonight Project Total Yang beings. I am going to grow and grow and grow. There will of course eventually cease to be room for anyone else in the universe at all, which I'm afraid will also mean the two of you, for which I apologize, but say also tough titty."
"Ms. Beadsman, I am coming to like you, unless it's simply the inevitably favorable comparison of anyone with Vigorous here. Have you ever had intercourse with someone soon to be of infinite size?"
gold
"Making me come. Me as a person," said Vlad the Impaler. "Where is that ditzy bitch?"
"Sorry about that."
Candy and Lenore
LENORE: Well see, it seems like it's not really like a life that's told, not lived; it's just that the living is the telling, that there's nothing going on with me that isn't either told or tellable, and if so, why the difference, why live at all?
[...]
LENORE: Pretty keen perception. If there's nothing about me but what can be said about me, what separates me from this lady in this story Rick got [...]? She's exactly what's said about her, right? Nothing more at all. And same with me, seems like. Gramma says she's going to show me how a life is words and nothing else. Gramma says words can kill and create. Everything.
[...]
LENORE: [...] if she can do all that just by talking to me, with just words, then what does that say about words?
JAY: ". . . she said, using words."
"Gee," I say, "there are no sheets on this bed."
The mouse looks at me. "Señor," he says, "if you sheet on my bed, I will keel you."
We both laugh, and the mouse punches me on the arm.
"The not blinking really bothers me, I've got to tell you. And what's this on her neck, here? On Brenda's neck?"
"Birthmark. Pimple."
"Is this an air-valve? This is an air-valve! See, here's the cap. Are you sitting with an inflatable doll?
"Don't be ridiculous."
"You're sitting with an inflatable doll! This isn't even a person."
"Brenda, this isn't funny, show Ms. Beadsman you're a person."
"My god. See, she weighs about one pound. I can lift her up." Lenore lifted Brenda way up by the thigh. Brenda suddenly fell out of Lenore's hand and her head got wedged between the bench and Mary-Ann's hand, and she was upside down. Her dress fell up.
"Good heavens," said Mr. Bloemker.
"One of those dolls. That's just sick. How can you sit in public with an anatomically correct doll?"
"I must confess, the wool seems to have been completely pulled over my eyes. I thought she was simply extremely shy. A troubled Midwesterner, in an ambivalent relation ..."
[...] the patients there couldn't remember the names for things, televisions, water, doors ... and so under Gramma Lenore's influence he had them identified with their function? [...] So the door is 'What we go from room to room through'? Water is 'What we drink, without color'? Television is 'What we watch Lawrence Welk on'--Lawrence Welk being primitive, undefined, even in syndication, no problem with Lawrence Welk. How my mother and all the rest came after a fashion to relearn the words they needed, via function, via what the things named were good for? And then Gramma Lenore noticing that the one component of the facility this method couldn't be applied to was the patients themselves, because they had no function, no use, weren't good for anything, really at all? No? She told me this drove her up the wall. They had no use at all. What? No, the derivative comes from the pineals of cattle. We use cattle pineals. Rather we would if we could. Now, just wait, please. [...]
I love the implicit shocked question that Lenore asks about where the pineals come from
[...] Care for a Corfu nut, by the way? No? They're quite good. I got them in Canada, fishing. [...]
one of Lenore's dad's many lies