October 26, 2015 - 16:52
"He blamed Momoko's peach tree for attracting those aphids. Wanted to chop it down, but Lloyd wouldn't let him. Momo means 'peach' in Japanese." p. 18
"She picked up the turquoise cafeteria tray as though she were about to head off down a buffet line, but instead she flung it above her head. The air around her filled with a cloud of black seeds. He could feel them, raining down on top of him, like a tickling wind. He watched them bouncing crazily off the tabletops and skittering across the floor.
"'My goodness!' the nurse said. 'All these seeds!' She started brushing them from the folds of his bathrobe, then dabbing with her finger at the ones on his head...
"'Too bad,' she said, swinging the chair around. 'But who knows? Maybe they'll grow.'
"'Yes!' Momoko clapped her hands. Then, spotting the pitcher of water on the table, she picked it up and marched over to Lloyd.
"'Poppy!' she said, peering down at his face. 'Same like father. Get it? It is good joke. Ha, ha.' Then she poured the water onto the seed-speckled carpet at his feet. 'Okay, poppy. Now you grow up!'" pp. 71-72
"'We only have maybe a dozen kinds left in commercial production here, because engineers have decided that potatoes all have to be the same size. Diversity is inconvenient to mechanized farming. This is what happens when agriculture becomes agribusiness. When engineers replace poets, and corporations gain total domination over all our food and all our poems.' Geek cocked his head. 'Monoculture,' he said. 'Has a sad and hollow ring to it, no?'" p. 125