Even the most pragmatic person fell victim at times to a longing for something other.

— Kate Morton

Every so often a reader tells me, somewhat disappointed, that their family doesn't have any secrets. To which I always reply that of course it does, they just don't know them yet. For where there are people living in proximity, there will always be secrets.

— Kate Morton

Give someone more time, and they'll appear to have done more with it.

— Kate Morton

Had any poet adequately described the wretched ugliness of a loved one turned inside out with grief?

— Kate Morton

History in the storyteller's hand was a potent force indeed, ....

— Kate Morton

His words had tossed the book that was her life into the air and the pages had been blown into disarray, could never be put back together to tell the same story.

— Kate Morton

...home is a magnet that lures back even its most abstracted children. But whether tomorrow or years from now, I cannot guess.

— Kate Morton

Hope, how she had grown to hate the word. It was an insidious seed planted inside a person's soul, surviving covertly on little tending, then flowering so spectacularly that none could help but cherish it.

— Kate Morton

How was a boy who'd tasted poverty ever expected to choose the poorer road?

— Kate Morton

I blame what happened next on the door. The one right across the hall from me, a mere three feet away. I love doors. All of them, without exception. Doors lead to things, and I’ve never met one I haven’t wanted to open. All the same, if that door hadn’t been so old and decorative, so decidedly closed, if a thread of light hadn’t positioned itself with such wretched temptation across its middle, highlighting the keyhole and its intriguing key, perhaps I might have stood a chance; remained twiddling my thumbs until Percy came to collect me. But it was, and I didn’t; I maintain that I simply couldn’t. Sometimes, you can tell just by looking at a door there’s something interesting behind it.

— Kate Morton