“grief is a housewhere the chairshave forgotten how to hold usthe mirrors how to reflect usthe walls how to contain usgrief is a house that disappearseach time someone knocks at the dooror rings the bella house that blows into the airat the slightest gustthat buries itself deep in the groundwhile everyone is sleepinggrief is a house where no one can protect youwhere the younger sisterwill grow older than the older onewhere the doorsno longer let you inor out”

“The freedom of growing older is that one is no longer obliged to dislike someone simply because they dislike you.”

“A story is not like a road to follow … it's more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside is altered by being viewed from these windows. And you, the visitor, the reader, are altered as well by being in this enclosed space, whether it is ample and easy or full of crooked turns, or sparsely or opulently furnished. You can go back again and again, and the house, the story, always contains more than you saw the last time. It also has a sturdy sense of itself of being built out of its own necessity, not just to shelter or beguile you.”

“That's one of the things we learn as we grow older -- how to forgive. It comes easier at forty than it did at twenty.”

“This is the house where they found Jack dead.This is the roomof the housewhere they found Jack dead.This is the floorin the roomof the housewhere they found Jack dead.This is the wall, splattered in red,standing next to the floor,in the roomof the housewhere they found Jack dead.This is the door leading into the tomb.This is the wall splattered in red,standing next to the floorin the roomof the housewhere they found Jack dead.This is the clock hanging over the door.This is the wall splattered in redstanding next to the floorin the roomin the roomof the housewhere they found Jack dead.This is the bird coming out of the clockhanging over the doorin the wallby the floorin the roomof the housewhere they found Jack dead.This is the song in the heart of the birdcoming out of the clockhanging over the doorin the wallby the floorin the roomof the housewhere they found Jack dead.These are the wordsto the song of the birdcoming out of the clockhanging over the doorin the wallby the floorin the roomof the housewhere they found Jack dead.This is the man who sits in the cell.Eleven years have come and gone.Jack is dead, but he lives on.He waits in silence, but he still can hear.The ancient song echoes in his ears.The sound of time with its tick tick TOCK!The song of the bird coming out of the clock,hanging over a door leading into a tomb,where there stand four walls splattered all in red,and a floor where a good man fell and bled,in the room of the house where they found Jack dead.These are the words of the cuckoo’s song,as he asks us who will right these wrongs.The cuckoo sings and the cuckoo wails,for the dead who cannot tell their tales.Rage all you want, but at close of day,justice is mine, and I will repay.”

“He asked, looking at her dark-rimmed eyes, "You do not sleep?"She shivered. "No. I do not want to sleep any more. I sleep too much already. It is so cold, where Quincy sends me in my sleep. Deep into the house, farther in, not into the house we see. It is as if that house were a face, and when you see a face you can't see the brain or the thoughts of the person behind it. And it is so strange - the house inside the house."********"How is it strange - this that you call the house inside the house?"She said vaguely, her eyes growing glassy, "Strange. Shapes change, and sizes. The rooms are different: bigger and blacker and longer and the shadows are full of things. Creatures - or sometimes the rooms get smaller, fewer, and the furnishings change and change, like the scenes in a kaleidoscope, and I see the people in the portraits walking about in them.”