"We've been an empire in decline since I can remember," Ketchum said bluntly; he wasn't kidding. "We are a lost nation, Danny. Stop farting around." - John Irving

We aren't eccentric, we're not bizarre. To each other, we're as normal and nice as the smell of bread, we were just a family. In a family, even exaggerations make perfect sense; they are always logical exaggerations, nothing more.

"Did Owen say your grandmother was a banshee?"

"He said she was 'wailing like a banshee,'" I explained.

Dan got out the dictionary , then; he was clucking his tongue and shaking his head, and laughing at himself saying, "That boy! What a boy! Brilliant but preposterous!" And that was the first time I learned, literally, what a banshee was — a banshee, in Irish folklore, is a female spirit whose wailing is a sign that a loved one will soon die.

Imagination, he realized, came harder than memory.