“After all, it was only a story,' I said, determined to prove her wrong. 'All manner of terrible things may happen in a story. They may be startling at the time, but it passes. One gets caught up in the narrative, but the dangers aren't real, are they? Things happen in any way the storyteller chooses. It is all just made up.”

“Just because something is told as a story and that story is part legend or myth, or feat of imagination, does not mean there is no truth in it.”

“Does something amuse you?' asked Uncle Montague.'I was merely reminding myself, Uncle, that I am getting too old to be so easily frightened by stories.''Really?' said Uncle Montague with a worrying degree of doubt in his voice. 'You think there is an age at which you might become immune to fear?”

“But she was no guardian angel. She was not trying to help me at all. She had been trying to claim me as she had claimed the lives of my fellow passengers.She was the thing that remained forever unseen in my visions of her tales. She lurked near the bodies of those whose whose lives were so cruelly taken. She was there always, waiting.”

“Give me a funeral over a wedding any day,.' said Uncle Montague with a sigh. 'The conversation is almost always superior.”

“Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means, this storyteller is alive. The next thing you know something fine will happen to her, something marvelous, and then she will turn around and smile.”

“She had the the most extraordinary capacity for falling asleep at a moments notice. Any kind of pause in the routine was an excuse for a nap. I swear she was more cat than human.”