“I would have liked to come into the grocery some morning and see them all, even the Elberts and the children, lying there crying with the pain of dying. I would help myself to groceries, I thought, stepping over their bodies, taking whatever I fancied from the shelves, and go home, with perhaps a kick for Mrs.Donell while she lay there. I was never sorry when I had thoughts like this; I only wished they would come true.”

“She wants her cup of stars.”

“All cat stories start with the statement: 'My mother, who was the first cat, told me this,' and I lay with Jonas listening to his stories.”

“I delight in what I fear.”

“I never was a person who wanted a handout. I was a cafeteria worker. I'm not too proud to ask the Best Western manager to give me a job. I have cleaned homes.”

“I have always loved to use fear, to take it and comprehend it and make it work and consolidate a situation where I was afraid and take it whole and work from there.”

“It’s not nice to think of children growing up like mushrooms, in the dark.”

“Everything is worse...if you think something is looking at you.”

“Around the house, my head deep in a pillowcase or the oven, my eyes focused on that supernatural neatness which the housewife sees somehow shadowing her familiar furniture, it was largely possible to disregard, or not-quite-hear, Sally, but in the car I was entirely what I believe is called a captive audience.”

“I am living on the moon, I told myself, I have little house all by myself on the moon.”

“So long as you write it away regularly nothing can really hurt you.”