“A good chunk of my life had been spent sorting out the scrambled communications, festering hostilities, and frozen affections that characterized families in turmoil. (257)”

“I'd been trained in the art of psychotherapy, the excavation of the past as a means of untangling the present and rendering it livable. It's detective work, of sorts, crouching stealthily in the blind alleys of the unconscious. (179)”

“Too many cases thrown out of court, too much pop-psycho crap, satanic bullshit... if you FEEL you've been abused, you HAVE been!”

“His experience and training should have taught him that families are the cauldrons in which violence is brewed. (144)”

“Pessimism is not good for the soul.""I sold my soul years ago.""To whom?""The bitch goddess Success. She cut town before paying off.”

“The key to excellent report writing' he said between chews, 'is to take every bit of passion out of it. Use an extra heaping portion of superflously extraneous tautological redundancies in order to make it mind-numbingly boring. So that when one's superior officers read it, they zone out and start skimming and maybe don't notice the fact that one has been spinning one's wheels since the body turned up and hasn't solved a goddamn thing.”

“Her basic disposition was a good deal sunnier than mine. But I was a better faker.”