“Mothers sometimes are overly possessive, but not all children allow themselves to be possessed.”

“There's nothing to this telepathy business. It's all in the mind.”

“I think perhaps all of us go a little crazy at times.”

“Funny how we take it for granted that we know all there is to know about another person, just because we see them frequently or because of some strong emotional tie.”

“All at once she could hear the sullen patter of the rain and sense the sigh of the wind behind it. She remembered the sound, because it had rained like that the day Mom was buried, the day they lowered her into that little rectangle of darkness.”

“Everything in this business makes sense, because it serves a real purpose, fills a need that's a part of living. Even a single nail, like this one, fulfills a function. Drive it into a crucial place and you can depend on it to do a job, keep on doing it for a hundred years to come. Long after we're dead and gone, both of us.”

“The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone to blame it on.”