Oh, magic hour, when a child first knows she can read printed words.

Look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time: Thus is your time on earth filled with glory.

The world was hers for the reading.

From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood.

She had become accustomed to being lonely. She was used to walking alone and to being considered 'different.' She did not suffer too much.

Brooklyn was a dream. All the things that happened there just couldn't happen. It was all dream stuff. Or was it all real and true and was it that she, Francie, was the dreamer?

It's come at last", she thought, "the time when you can no longer stand between your children and heartache.

They learned no compassion from their own anguish. Thus their suffering was wasted.

But she needs me more than she needs him and I guess being needed is almost as good as being loved. Maybe better.

Everything, decided Francie after that first lecture, was vibrant with life and there was no death in chemistry. She was puzzled as to why learned people didn't adopt chemistry as a religion.

Francie, huddled with other children of her kind, learned more that first day than she realized. She learned of the class system of a great Democracy.

Forgive to set yourself free

When a writer doesn’t show his face, he becomes a local symptom of God’s famous reluctance to appear.

The process of growth is obviously critical to my understanding of the land and myself. So the process is far more unpredictable with far more compromises with the day, the weather, the material.

Like attracts like. Whatever the conscious mind thinks and believes. the subconscious identically creates.

A special ability means a heavy expenditure of energy in a particular direction, with a consequent drain from some other side of life.

All my life I have battled the alarm clock, pummeling the snooze button over and over with mounting self-loathing until the shame is finally strong enough to lever me upright.

Wicked is not much worse than indiscreet.

To Jane Austen, every fool is a treasure trove.

I'm often called obsessive, but I don't think I am any more than anyone else.