Cassandra's grandmother smiled then, only it wasn't a happy smile. Cassandra thought she knew how it felt to smile like that. She often did so herself when her mother promised her something she really wanted but knew might not happen.

It was the sibling thing, I suppose. I was fascinated by the intricate tangle of love and duty and resentment that tied them together. The glances they exchanged; the complicated balance of power established over decades; the games I would never play with rules I would never fully understand. And perhaps that was key: they were such a natural group that they made me feel remarkably singular by comparison. To watch them together was to know strongly, painfully, all that I'd been missing.

Children don’t require of their parents a past and they find something faintly unbelievable, almost embarrassing, in parental claims to a prior existence.

Ah, well. Life's too short for moderation, wouldn't you say?

I'd pretty much given up hope of being published, so I just wrote the book I wanted to read.

Adults weren’t supposed to understand their children and you were doing something wrong if they did.

Mother didn't understand that children aren't frightened by stories; that their lives are full of far more frightening things than those contained in fairy tales.