“At eighteen Katharine had decided there was dignity in loneliness. In time the ideas had become synonymous in her mind, believing in the distance created between people, one could never be foolish. "You can always come back," Siobhan said, "if the dark starts to frighten you."But Katharine knew that wasn't true.”

“You never did master a leer."- Katharine Murray, Death on the Family Tree”

“She had always been good at dreaming, but what she had never done before was believe a dream could actually come true. She believed now. The wonder of setting sail created possibilities she had never considered before.”

“Until then I had always thought of loneliness as something negative—an absence of company, and, of course, something temporary... That day I had learned that it was much more. It was something which could press and oppress, could distort the ordinary and play tricks with the mind. Something which lurked inimically all around, stretching the nerves and twanging them with alarms, never letting one forget that there was no one to help, no one to care. It showed one as an atom adrift in vastness, and it waited all the time its chance to frighten and frighten horribly—that was what loneliness was really trying to do; and that was what one must never let it do...”

“Lights," I said softly. This had become my favorite word over the past week. In my mind, it had become synonymous with freedom.”

“Madeline knew how that was. So many people had ideas of what you should and shouldn't do, but in the end you had to decide for yourself.”