"So broken was my father's family that it felt to me like a catastrophe you could live with only if you kept it quiet, let it die down of its own accord like a dangerous fire."
The tumultuous relationship between the narrator and his father's family is clearly demonstrated in this line; he envisions them as a "dangerous fire." Get too close, and he would be burned.
"When we came into the kitchen, my mother looked up and the whole history of his family and her family and ourselves passed over her face in one intuitive waltz of welcome and then of pain".
In one wonderfully written passage, Deane shows us the inner turmoil of the mother, and the family's strained relationships with each other. When at first, his mother's face flashes in "welcome", it then quickly turns to "pain" when she realizes who it is, demonstrating the clear mental distress she is facing.
“Some families, Katie told us, are devil-haunted; it's a curse a family can never shake off. Maybe it's something terrible in the family history, some terrible deed that was done in the past, and it just spreads and it spreads down the generations like a shout down a tunnel that echoes and echoes and never really stops.”
The theme of family and bloodlines is an important one throughout the novel; the narrator places a huge emphasis on how all members of a family are undoubtedly tied together, no matter the circumstances. In this quote, he reflects on something a girl has told him, that curses are genetic and pass down through generations, personified as a "shout down a tunnel that echoes and echoes and never really stops."
