“They climbed the wide stairways. Their footsteps echoed and echoed through the house. "What on earth will you be doing with something so large?" said Mum."I shall live in it with my servants, of course," said Mina. "Or I shall establish a school.""A school, my lady?""Yes. A school for the writing of nonsense and the pursuit of extraordinary activities.”

“The season of evil," I echoed. "Protect your soul.”

“Everybody's got the seam of goodness in them, Kit," said Grandpa. "Just a matter of whether it can be found and brought out into the light.”

“There's light and joy, but there's also darkness all around and we can be lost in it.”

“I love the night. Anything seems possible at night when the rest of the world has gone to sleep. It's dark and silent in the house, but if I listen close, I hear the beat beat beat of my heart. I hear the creak and crack of the house. I hear my mum breathing gently in her sleep in the room next door.”

“The beauties of the North seemed to be intensified by the loss we had experienced there, and they drew us back to them.”

“I went out into the corridor. I asked a nurse if she knew where the people with arthritis went. She said lots of them went to Ward 34 on the top floor. She said she thought that was a silly place to put people with bad bones who had such trouble walking and climbing stairs.”

“The dead are often known to eat 27 and 53”

“It was great to see the owls," I said.She smiled."Yes. They're wild things, of course. Killers, savages. They're wonderful.”

“It's called evolution. You must know that. Yes, we are.'She looked up from her book.'I would hope, though,' she went on, 'that we also have some rather more beautiful ancestors. Don't you?' --Mina”

“Drawing makes you look at the world more closely. It helps you to see what you're looking at more clearly. Did you know that?"I said nothing."What colour's a blackbird?" she said."Black""Typical!”