“As I child, I came to this idea with a horrified fascination. Once upon a time, I wasnt here. Before that, my parents werent here. And before that”

“If you had to lose everything, what would you miss most? It wouldn't be anything gross, like the big house, or the fancy car, assuming you had such things. It wouldn't be your impeccable reputation...”

“All you have to do is choose the right day, the right weather, and you come upon a hidden place in the morning light where time stopped long before you were born”

“There are days when that dark face is something I can think of as a friend a primal energy that carries me forward when nothing else will but more often than not I am face-to-face with a stranger...”

“Everything stayed hidden [] it was all secret known by anyone who cared to know, but unacknowledged, like a priests feverish brightness around adolescent boys, or the beatings Mrs Wilson endured o...”

“When Mother had told me that animals found quiet, unexposed places to die, I had always imagined they knew they were dying, and accepted it, almost gracefully. Now I saw that this wasn't so at all:...”

“We all know the protocol. But more powerful than our protocol is our grooming to believe in something more.”

“Marginalised and abused children are often overlooked even today, and risk becoming marginalised and abused adults who may never receive acknowledgment or respect for the immense physical and emoti...”

“Something snapped," said Madeline. She saw Perry's hand shining back in its graceful, practiced arc. She heard Bonnie's guttural voice. It occurred to her that there were so many levels of evil in ...”

“work at our responsibility as parents as if everything in life counted on it, because in fact everything in life does count on it.”

“Happiness [is] only real when shared”

“That's what people do who love you. They put their arms around you and love you when you're not so lovable.”

“Being a dad is quite rewarding and even magical at times. It is our greatest chance to do something right in our lives that will keep making the world a brighter place even generations after we are...”

“I always wondered why God was supposed to be a father," she whispers. Fathers always want you to measure up to something. Mothers are the ones who love you unconditionally, don't you think?”

“Sigmund Freud, the father of psychiatry and an atheist, theorized that ones attitude toward ones father largely shaped ones attitude toward God.”