“In those timeless years between infancy and, say, seven what is has always been: in that way children inhabit the realm of myth.”

“Don't blame me, blame history, he says, smiling. Such things happen. Falling in love has been recorded, or at least those words have.”

“It is always a mistake to curse back openly at those who are stronger than you unless there is a fence between.”

“[Northrop] Frye was concerned mostly with literary criticism, and myths interested him as structural elements in works of literature. He used the word myth to mean story, without attaching any connotation of truth or falsehood to it; but a myth is a story of a certain kind. The myths of a culture are those stories it takes seriously—the ones that are thought to be a key to its identity.”

“The difference between lie and lay. Lay is always passive. Even men used to say, I'd like to get laid. Though sometimes they said, I'd like to lay her. All this is pure speculation. I don't really know what men used to say. I had only their words for it.”

“All those years I'd kept an outline of my father in my head, like a chalk line enclosing a father-shaped space. When I was little, I'd coloured it in often enough. But those colours had been too bright and the outline had been too large...”

“All myths are stories, but not all stories are myths: among stories, myths hold a special place.”