"We stayed there kneeling on the hard lino floor. My brother was crying softly.

Then the lights came on.

I looked up and saw the hard bright triumph in my mother's eyes. She would die believing God had fixed the fuse." Chapter 2, pg. 5

"The look was soft and pleading. It did not belong in that hard, black-bearded face, did not suit the tone of voice. Oscar knew this look. He had seen it before. It was a will-o'-the-wisp. If you tried to run towards it, it retreated; if you embraced it, it turned to distance in your arms. You could not hold it, that soft and lovely center in his father's feelings." Chapter 10, pg. 30

"He did not see then (and did not see ever) that she would be a professional liability to him, that she would so distress succeeding deans and bishops, that the pair of them would...