“Silas deliberately ignored that question, which he knew was as much for him as it was for Uncle. It was going to be one of those nights where she’d sink her teeth into a topic and keep chewing and chewing at it.”

“She knew what Silas wanted. He wanted her to believe Amos was alive somewhere. Silas wanted help, clinging to his hope. She knew her son. For all her dislike of how much he was like his father, she knew him.”

“This was not Aunt Dahlia, my good and kindly aunt, but my Aunt Agatha, the one who chews broken bottles and kills rats with her teeth.”

“Robin used to hate to see me eat. I chewed too long for her taste. One day I figured it out. She had put two and two together. All that chewing! It was the food that was keeping me alive!”

“Grace is the first mouthful of each course - chewed and chewed until there's nothing left of it. And all the time you're chewing you pay attention to the flavour of the food, to it's consistency and temperature, to the pressures on your teeth and the feel of the muscles in your jaws.”

“When you get kicked in the teeth, chew on it: don't bite back.”