What kind of idiot do you think I am? "I have no idea what kind of idiot you are," Miss Jesczenka said. "That's why I'm asking." - M. K. Hobson

Emily looked at him for a long time. There were so many things she wanted to know—but she wanted not to know them even more. She didn’t want any more answers. He had been the one thing she could trust, the one person she could rely on. She wanted to beg him to be that way again. But it wasn’t him who had changed. It was her. It was her own credulity she really wanted back. And credulity, like virtue, could be lost only once.

Your frontier ethics are so rawboned, Miss Edwards, as rough-hewn and clumsy as the log cabin in which you must have been raised. Mrs. Stanton's face was like marble as she spoke; only her lips moved with ugly precision. Decency is striving for perfection in a world in which every other hoglike creature satisfies himself with sloppiness and indulgence. Decency is not in failing to murder someone. It's in murdering the right person, and sparing your family the indignity of getting caught.

You know, there’s one thing about you that always astonishes me. The longer you talk, the wronger you get.