How plotless real life was!

He obeyed, mostly out of exhaustion.

(About parenting:) ... all that tedium, broken up by little spurts of high drama.

Apparently, he thought, there were people in this world who simply never came clear ... In the end you had to accept that the day would never arrive when you finally understood what they were all about. For some reason, this made him supremely happy.

... everyone must play his role.

I've always thought sleep was a wonderful invention. Not that being awake isn't nice too, of course. But when I get up in the morning, I think, boy, only fourteen more hours and I can be back to sleep again ... And I never dream, because it distracts my mind from pure sleeping ...

When bad things happened-the usual accidents, illnesses, jogs in the established pattern-Bee treated them with eye-rolling good humor, as if they were the stuff of situation comedy.

Women were the ones that held the reins, it emerged.