It's just because I love the past that I want this house to look back on its glamourous moment of youth and beauty, and I want its stairs to creak as if to the footsteps of women with hoop skirts and men in boots and spurs. But they've made it into a blondined, rouged-up old woman of sixty.

Draw your chair up close to the edge of the precipice and I’ll tell you a story.

he was figuratively following along beside her as she walked the fence, ready to catch her if she should fall.

...I think he revalued everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew from her well-loved eyes.

Your first most typical figure in any new place turns out to be a bluff or a local nuisance.

Never walk near the bed; to a ghost your ankle is your most vulnerable part-once in bed, you're safe; he may lie around under the bed all night, but you're safe as daylight. If you still have doubts pull the blanket over your head.

Grown up, and that is a terribly hard thing to do. It is much easier to skip it and go from one childhood to another.