“whenever Treadway was emotionally tired, he went to bed even earlier than usual, using sleep like a kind of temporary, convenient death.”

“You told the truth or you lied with consequences like these. If you held back truth you couldn't win. You swallowed truth and it went sour in your belly and poisoned you slowly.”

“She waited the eternal instant that women wait when a horror jumps out at them. It is an instant that men do not use for waiting, an instant that opens a door to life or death. Women look through the opening because something might be alive in there.”

“The lullaby had the kind of tune everyone thinks they've heard before but can't remember where. A tune like that floats in the air all the time and now and then you catch it.”

“Whenever she imagined her child, grown up without interference from a judgemental world, she imagined its male and female halves as complementing each other, and as being secretly, almost magically powerful.”

“Right is right, even if you're alone.”

“There is nothing worse than a proud stoic. -- The Big Why”