“What time is it?""Time?""Time.""Oh," She said. "A quarter to four. Mr. Markham, something terrible has happened."She didn't have to tell me that. Something perfectly dreadful had happened, by God. Someone had called me in the middle of the bloody night.”

“She tried to worry that something terrible had happened to him, but didn't believe it for a moment. Nothing terrible ever happened to him, though she was beginning to think that it was time it damn well did. If nothing terrible happened to him soon maybe she'd do it herself. Now there was an idea.”

“But I told my grandmother, and she listened, and then she said, "Don't ever tell this story to anybody else. If you tell this story to anybody else, something terrible will happen. Something terrible will happen to our family." And then she had a lot to do. (174)”

“She knows that feeling too. Of believing that each time someone says her name, it’s to tell her that something bad has happened.”

“It was time for me to take charge and live my life instead of letting something that had happened to me lead it for me. So many people had told me the same thing, hundreds of times. It was something I had to learn for myself.”

“SOMETHING TERRIBLE IS GOING TO HAPPEN. I KNOW IT. EVERY TIME I HAD A BAD DREAM I FEEL LIKE LEAVING TOWN. THEN I FEEL THAT SOMETHING TERRIBLE IS GOING TO HAPPEN. AND THIS IS THE WORST DREAM I'VE EVER HAD IN MY WHOLE LIFE.”