“Uncle alone in the house with the children said he'd dress up to amuse them. After a long wait, as he did not appear, they went down and saw a masked man putting the table silver into a bag. 'Oh, Uncle,' they cried in delight. 'Yes, isn't my make-up good?' said Uncle, taking his mask off. Thus goes the Hegelian syllogism of humour. Thesis: Uncle made himself up as a burglar (a laugh for the children); antithesis: it WAS a burglar (a laugh for the reader); synthesis: it still was Uncle (fooling the reader).”

“Yes, Uncle Ryan! You said you wanted me to make you an uncle. Poof! You're an uncle of a fluffy puppy." - Lilianna Gregor”

“Dad told Uncle Seth not to screw things up,” she informed me as we washed our hands. “He said even if Uncle Seth is famous, him getting a woman like you defies belief.”I laughed and smoothed down the skirt of my dress. “I don’t know about that. I don’t think your dad gives your uncle enough credit."Brandy gave me a sage look, worthy of someone much older. “Uncle Seth spent last Valentine’s Day at a library.”

“(Precocious children rarely grow up good). My aunts and uncles thought me quite atrocious. For using words more adult than I should”

“Like him, Uncle had eccentric tastes and liked old things. The difference, Silas was beginning to see, was that Uncle saw such objects as extensions of himself, of his body, essential, required, uniquely his. This thought made Silas uneasy.”

“Does something amuse you?' asked Uncle Montague.'I was merely reminding myself, Uncle, that I am getting too old to be so easily frightened by stories.''Really?' said Uncle Montague with a worrying degree of doubt in his voice. 'You think there is an age at which you might become immune to fear?”