“You never did master a leer."- Katharine Murray, Death on the Family Tree”

“Katharine: I can't keep up with you!Tom: I don't want you to keep up. I love you for yourself.- Death on the Family Tree”

“Vines and trees will teach you that which you will never learn from masters.”

“A few women had cried, remembering the way Henry smiled or how he would join them in singing or thinking that the death ofanyone, good or bad, master or not, cut down one more tree in the life forest that shielded them from their own death; but most said or did nothing.”

“At eighteen Katharine had decided there was dignity in loneliness. In time the ideas had become synonymous in her mind, believing in the distance created between people, one could never be foolish. "You can always come back," Siobhan said, "if the dark starts to frighten you."But Katharine knew that wasn't true.”

“The family is the cradle of the world’s misinformation. There must be something in family life that generates factual error. Over-closeness, the noise and heat of being. Perhaps even something deeper like the need to survive. Murray says we are fragile creatures surrounded by a world of hostile facts. Facts threaten our happiness and security. The deeper we delve into things, the looser our structure may seem to become. The family process works towards sealing off the world. Small errors grow heads, fictions proliferate. I tell Murray that ignorance and confusion can’t possibly be the driving forces behind family solidarity. What an idea, what a subversion. He asks me why the strongest family units exist in the least developed societies. Not to know is a weapon of survival, he says. Magic and superstition become entrenched as the powerful orthodoxy of the clan. The family is strongest where objective reality is most likely to be misinterpreted. What a heartless theory, I say. But Murray insists it’s true.”