“I explained we lost the porch to the flood. 'Father hasn't gotten around to rebuilding it, although he's quite a good carpenter. He says if Jesus was a carpenter, it's good enough for a clergyman. But I don't remember that Jesus let his house fall down.”

“Meaning. If you're going to die, you want to find meaning in life. You want to connect the dots.”

“Yes, I'm shallow, I don't mind admitting it. Perhaps I should admit that there's no end to the depths of my shallowness.”

“It’s one thing if a person learns you’re a witch. It’s quite another if he learns you’re a murderer. I almost forget I’m a witch now that I know I’m a murderer—murderess, actually. Murderess sounds so much worse.”

“Even a witch wants sympathy.”

“Witches don’t look like anything. Witches are. Witches do.”

“There are no preconditions for jealousy. You don't have to be right, you don't have to be reasonable.”

“There are no preconditions for jealousy. You don't have to be right, you don't have to be reasonable. Take Othello. He was neither right nor reasonable, and Desdemona ended up dead. I wouldn't mind Leanne ending up dead. I wouldn't mind exploding her into fireworks of peacock and pearl.”

“We laughed a lot and I grew warmer still, lovely and warm. I do realize that some of that warmth was due to the wine, but there was much more to it than that. There are two distinct aspects to Communion wine: one aspect is the wine itself, the other is the idea of communion. Wine is certainly warming, but communion is a great deal more so.”

“Now that’s true poetic irony. I rush into battle to defend the fair name of Rose Larkin, and what does she do but fetch Robert to stop me.”

“Secrets press inside a person. They press the way water presses at a dam. The secrets and the water, they both want to get out.”