“His being there was stirring up a lot of memories she'd have been happier to leave as sentimental sediment. Not that they weren't good memories. That was the trouble.”
“Grandmother's voice was ice. "They do not. Your mother has been happy all these years, till you began stirring up old memories. Leave her alone. She is my daughter... no outsider shall ever come between us again... neither Andrew Stuart nor you nor anyone. And you will be good enough to remember that.”
“Standing in the small space, Holly was overwhelmed by memories and a strange protective feeling for the child she'd been”
“there was a time when these weren't memories.”
“And a question stirred within me: What if he, this yellow-eyed creature, in his disorderly, filthy mound of leaves, in his uncomputed life, is happier than we are?”
“Sentimental memories were like sugar-water icicles.”