“I never really had any God at all, just an imagined one, an inherited ghost.”

“She had never really believed in God. There didn't seem any point in it, and he just seemed so, well, unlikely. But now, a world that definitely had no God at all felt kind of... empty. It wasn't really God she wanted; it was the possibility of God.”

“This story never really had a point. It’s just a lull - a skip in the record. We are addresses in ghost towns. We are old wishes that never came true. We are hand grenades (and every word you say pulls the pin). We are all gods, we are all monsters.”

“How delightful! Dunford had just come into an unexpected inheritance. She rather hoped it was something good. One of her friends had just unwillingly inherited thirty-seven cats.”

“Herr Schiller? Are there really any such things as ghosts?' The old man did not even show surprise at the question. He heaved a sigh. 'Yes Pia, there are. But never the ones you expect.”

“Ghosts! […] I almost think we are all of us ghosts. It is not only what we have inherited from our father and mother that ‘walks’ in us. It is all sorts of dead ideas, and lifeless old beliefs, and so forth. They have no vitality, but they cling to us all the same, and we cannot shake them off. Whenever I take up a newspaper, I seem to see ghosts gliding between the lines. There must be ghosts all the country over, as thick as the sands of the sea. And then we are, one and all, so pitifully afraid of the light.”