Everyone has a thousand wishes before a tragedy, but just one afterward.

The very worst events in life have that effect on a family: we always remember, more sharply than anything else, the last happy moments before everything fell apart.

Elsa thinks about how Granny used to say, 'You have standards and I have double standards, and so I win.

It's complicated."
"Yes, until someone explains it to you!

Everything is complicated if no one explains it to you.

Mum is a perfectionist and Dad is a pedant and that was partly why their marriage didn't work so well, Elsa figures. Because a perfectionist and a pedant are two very different things.