“Aunt Agatha is like an elephant—not so much to look at, for in appearance she resembles more a well-bred vulture, but because she never forgets.”

“For an author Jerry Vail was rather nice-looking, most authors, as is widely known, resembling in appearance the more degraded types of fish, unless they look like birds, when they could pass as vultures and no questions asked.”

“Once a year, she remembers that she is insignificant. Then she forgets agains, because more than she is insignificant, she is forgetful.”

“When Agatha already felt like she was dying, for a second she thought about turning him into a eunuch for life, in self-defense, she would argue.”

“Even at normal times Aunt Dahlia's map tended a little towards the crushed strawberry. But never had I seen it take on so pronounced a richness as now. She looked like a tomato struggling for self-expression.”

“(Cat) So she says I can’t have catnip any more because it’s like a drug. So, like, what’s she worried about: I’m not going to do well in school or what?”

“My Aunt Agatha, the curse of the Home Counties and a menace to one and all.”

“She felt that she could so much more depend upon the sincerity of those who sometimes looked or said a careless or a hasty thing, than of those whose presence of mind never varied, whose tongue never slipped.”

“When she told people how nervous she was about any kind of public appearance, they said incredibly annoying things like, ‘Don’t forget to breathe.’ Now she knew why.”

“Aunt Agatha, who eats broken bottles and wears barbed wire next to the skin.”