But there can be no secrets in a house where there are children.

I shall start at the beginning. Though of coarse, the beginning is never where you think it is.

There are cultures in which it is believed that a name contains all a persons mystical power. That a name should be known only to God and to the person who holds it and to very few privileged others. To pronounce such a name either ones own or someone else's is to invite jeopardy. This it seemed was such a name.

I don't pretend reality is the same for everyone.

The tears I gratified him with were fake ones. Ones that set off my green eyes the way diamonds set off emeralds. And it worked. If you dazzled a man with green eyes, he will be so hypnotized that he won’t notice there is someone inside the eyes spying on him. – Vida Winters Page 268

Sometimes when you open the door to the past, what you confront is your destiny.

I have always been a reader; I have read at every stage of my life, and there has never been a time when reading was not my greatest joy