“Once, when I remarked that she looked like a disoriented bandicoot, she leapt up from the piano bench and beat me within an inch of my life with a rolled-up piano sonata by Schubert. Ophelia has no sense of humor.”

“And Miss Ophelia?" he asked, getting round to her at last. "Miss Ophelia? Well, to tell you the truth, Ned, we're all rather worried about her." Ned recoiled as if a wasp had gone up his nose. "Oh? What's the trouble? Nothing serious, I hope." "She's gone all green," I said. "I think it's chlorosis. Dr. Darby thinks so too.”

“The sweater didn't fit me, of course. Even with the sleeves rolled up I looked like a baggy monkey picking bananas. But to my way of thinking, at least in winter, woolly warmth trumps freezing fashion any day of the week.”

“I realized at once that a great actress can never be greater than when she's starring in her own life.”

“I found a dead body in the cucumber patch,' I told them.'How very like you,' Ophelia said, and went on preening her eyebrows.”

“It is not unknown for fathers with a brace of daughters to reel off their names in order of birth when summoning the youngest, and I had long ago become accustomed to being called 'Ophelia Daphne Flavia, damn it.”

“Mother Goose!I have never much cared for flippant remarks, especially when others make them, and in particular, I don't give a frog's fundament for them when they come from an adult.”