“I no longer knew what was real and what wasnt. The lines between reality and delusion had become so blurred.”

“Things are not as they seem. You do not understand. There is no escape. This is all there is. I had never seen eyes filled with so much sadness.”

“She brushed the tears from their faces and sang them a melancholy lullaby. Her obvious devotion to her daughters pulled at my heart strings, making my chest ache with longing for my own mother.”

“I felt like I was living two lives. One in the present and one in the past.”

“Nausea and panic rose in my throat. I had killed a man.”

“The poker fell from my trembling hands as my entire body shook with reaction. I fell to my knees, pressed my hands to my face and began to sob. What had I done?”

“Anna thought about the men outside on the gallery. She was glad they were there; finding them smoking and talking quietly had been comforting, it was what men did in the evenings when the work was ...”

“Her arms groped forward to guide her when her tears blocked her vision in darkness. Then she couldn't run any more. She sank to her knees and began to cry in her terror. She wanted Gary.She suddenl...”

“Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,And, while the bubbling and loud hissing urnThrows up a steamy column and the cupsThat cheer but not inebr...”

“She was of the stuff of which great men's mothers are made. She was indispensable to high generation, feared at tea-parties, hated in shops, and loved at crises.”

“For we think back through our mothers if we are women.”

“He is a young man with a future of power and opportunity and we are young women destined to be either wives and mothers at the very best, or spinster parasites at the worst.”

“The next day, when I came home from the library, there was a small, used red record player in my room. I found my mother in the kitchen and spotted a bandage taped to her arm. Ma, I asked. Where di...”