“She tried to worry that something terrible had happened to him, but didn't believe it for a moment. Nothing terrible ever happened to him, though she was beginning to think that it was time it damn well did. If nothing terrible happened to him soon maybe she'd do it herself. Now there was an idea.”

“But I told my grandmother, and she listened, and then she said, "Don't ever tell this story to anybody else. If you tell this story to anybody else, something terrible will happen. Something terrible will happen to our family." And then she had a lot to do. (174)”

“He had seen how people came a cropper by giving way to impulse. It was to his judiciousness, at every turn, that he owed the fact that nothing terrible had ever happened to him.”

“She was in a terrible marriage and she couldn't talk to anyone. He used to hit her, and in the beginning she told him that if it ever happened again, she would leave him. He swore that it wouldn't and she believed him. But it only got worse after that, like when his dinner was cold, or when she mentioned that she'd visited with one of the neighbors who was walking by with his dog. She just chatted with him, but that night, her husband threw her into a mirror.”

“What time is it?""Time?""Time.""Oh," She said. "A quarter to four. Mr. Markham, something terrible has happened."She didn't have to tell me that. Something perfectly dreadful had happened, by God. Someone had called me in the middle of the bloody night.”

“What happens if you do nothing, nothing, there's a price and a terrible freedom to that”