“Adults weren’t supposed to understand their children and you were doing something wrong if they did.”

“If you don't stop apologizing, you're going to convince me you've done something wrong.”

“Mother didn't understand that children aren't frightened by stories; that their lives are full of far more frightening things than those contained in fairy tales.”

“Children don’t require of their parents a past and they find something faintly unbelievable, almost embarrassing, in parental claims to a prior existence.”

“Cassandra always hid when she read, though she never quite knew why. It was as if she couldn't shake the guilty suspicion that she was being lazy, that surrendering herself so completely to something so enjoyable must surely be wrong. But surrender she did. Let herself drop through the rabbit hole and into a tale of magic and mystery ...”

“It was the sibling thing, I suppose. I was fascinated by the intricate tangle of love and duty and resentment that tied them together. The glances they exchanged; the complicated balance of power established over decades; the games I would never play with rules I would never fully understand. And perhaps that was key: they were such a natural group that they made me feel remarkably singular by comparison. To watch them together was to know strongly, painfully, all that I'd been missing.”

“Something inside Dolly curled up and died. Things could not have been worse. Except that suddenly they were.”