But everyone's an expert with the virtue of hindsight . . . .

You must learn to know the difference between tales and the truth, my Liza, she would say. Fairy tales have a habit of ending too soon. They never show what happens afterwards when the prince and princess ride off the page.

She was the breeze on a summer's day, the first drops of rain when the earth was parched, light from the evening star.

... people who'd led dull and blameless lives did not give thanks for second chances.

Round and round the questions flew, until finally I found myself standing at the open door of a bookshop. It’s natural in times of great perplexity, I think, to seek out the familiar, and the high shelves and long rows of neatly lined-up spines were immensely reassuring. Amid the smell of ink and binding, the dusty motes in beams of strained sunlight, the embrace of warm, tranquil air, I felt that I could breathe more easily.

To abandon a child, she had once said to someone, when she thought Cassandra couldn't hear, was an act so cold, so careless, it refused forgiveness.

But in my humble opinion, a house needs a good party once in a while; remind folks it exists.