There had not been this many words sounded in our house for a long time, and it was going to take a while to clean them out.

Can't you make them stop?' I asked her that day, wondering if there was anything in this woman I could speak to, if she had ever run joyfully over grass, or had watched flowers, or known delight or love.

Poor strangers, they have so much to be afraid of.

Hill House, she thought, You're as hard to get into as heaven.

I assume then, that you have no real faith in the fondness any of the rest of us may feel for you?''None,' said Mrs. Halloran.

I suppose, I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village to shock the story's readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives.

Life Among the Savages is a disrespectful memoir of my children.