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

I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had.

On the moon we have everything. Lettuce, and pumpkin pie and Amanita phalloides. We have cat-furred plants and horses dancing with their wings. All the locks are solid and tight, and there are no ghosts.

I'm going to put death in all their food and watch them die.

Gossip says she hanged herself from the turret on the tower, but when you have a house like Hill House with a tower and a turret, gossip would hardly allow you to hang yourself anywhere else.

I can't help it when people are frightened," says Merricat. "I always want to frighten them more.

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.