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.
Chapter 13, Red Hand, Gold-Colored Eye (pp. 221-222) - The Hidden Goddess (2011)