“Every new promise was like something heavy I had to carry, with no place to put anything down.”

“If you wish to avoid an unpleasant story you had best put this book down”

“If you like books with happy endings then put this book down immediately.”

“There was something I was always very good at, however, and that was teaching myself not to be frightened while frightening things are going on. It is difficult to do this, but I had learned. It is simply a matter of putting one’s fear aside, like the vegetable on the plate you don’t want to touch until all of your rice and chicken are gone, and getting frightened later, when one is out of danger. Sometimes I imagine I will be frightened for the rest of my life because of all of the fear I put aside during my time in Stain’d-by-the-Sea.”

“It felt like the wrong thing to do, standing at the wrong door in the wrong place. We did it anyway. Knowing something is wrong and doing it anyway happens very often in life, and I doubt I will eer know why.”

“It looked like something the Hemlock needed, or a piece of equipment a plumber had left behind. It looked like none of your business.”

“There are two types of panicking: standing still and not saying a word, and leaping all over the place babbling anything that comes into your head.”