“Piglet opened the letter box and climbed in. Then, having untied himself, he began to squeeze into the slit, through which in the old days when front doors were front doors, many an unexpected letter than WOL had written to himself, had come slipping.”

“No back doors! I had a back door, but every fucker who thought he was bad wouldn't use the front door because everyone knows that if you're bad, you slip out through the back. I boarded it up - use the front door like everybody else.”

“He stepped fully into the house. The air inside was cool on his skin. He turned, expecting the front door to close on its own. But it stayed open, as it was supposed to. He shook his head, chiding himself for letting an old house spook him. He walked into the kitchen. Behind him, the front door slammed shut.”

“Nice to know a few things aren't in the government's files,' he said, opening the front door and stepping out ahead of her. The human courtesy of waiting for the woman to go through a door was all flourish, no sense. If any danger waited on the other side of a door, he'd rather meet it himself, not send her into it.”

“There were only three times in your life when it was proper to come through the front door, and you were carried every time.”

“I'd felt obligated to get Ian a Christmas present. A chunk of coal sat in a brightly wrapped box under the tree, his name written in big bold letters on the front of it.Ian might be family, but he still had been a very naughty boy this year.”