“To be the child of a conficted or reputed witch was inherently dangerous; in one pathetic case in Lorraine a young couple were both accused, and it emerged that they had decided to marry after attending an execution at the stake of their respective parents, 'so that they would have nothing to reproach one another with.”

“I’m an only child, so logically I gave birth to my parents, because if it weren’t for me they wouldn’t be parents at all, they’d simply be a married couple. (Or maybe without me they wouldn’t even have been married!)
”

“I had the fleeting thought then that we are each of us pathetic in one way or another, and the trick is to marry a person whose patheticness you can tolerate.”

“and another claimed it was inherited through a parent who was a carrier of the defective gene. I had always assumed the latter was the case with Claire. After all, surely a child who grew out of grief would be born with a heavy heart.”

“On rare occasions one does hear of a miraculous case of a married couple falling in love after marriage, but on close examination it will be found that it is a mere adjustment to the inevitable.”

“He would look so young. They were both so young. Tessa knew it was unusual to marry at seventeen and eighteen, but they were racing a clock.The clock of Jem's life, before it wound down.”