“The mere fact that Lottie had come and gone away again made things seem a little worse-just as perhaps prisoners feel a little more desolate after visitors come and go, leaving them behind.”

“Things somehow seem more real and vivid when one can apply somebody else's ready-made phrase about them (...) you bring them out triumphantly, and feel you've clinched the argument with the mere magical sound of them. That's what comes of the higher education.”

“The security light made me feel safe, though I knew that was an illusion. If there's light, you can just see what's coming for you a little more clearly.”

“You did not have to understand miracles to believe in them, and in fact Mabel had come to suspect the opposite. To believe, perhaps you had to cease looking for explanations and instead hold the little thing in your hands as long as you were able before it slipped like water between your fingers.”

“Feelings can have a life of their own and you have very little direct control over them, except perhaps to make them worse.”

“He had undertaken a little assay at the good fight and found that neither the good nor the fight was left to him . . . he had gone after life again and they had shown him life and made him eat it.”