I wish the night would end,I wish the day'd begin,I wish it would rain or snow,or the wind would blow,or the grass would grow,I wish I had yesterday,I wish there were games to play...

Love doesn't always come when you want it to. Sometimes it just happens, despite your will.

Grief, no matter how you try to cater to its wail, has a way of fading away.

People make the rules of society, not God.

He won't listen to the music, and I can't turn it off.

I love you,” was his reply. “I make myself keep on loving you, despite what you do. I've got to love you. We all have to love you, and believe inyou, and think you are looking out for our best interests. But look at us, Momma, and really see us.

Fool! Never wait on a man! Let him wait on himself!

Though I'm not sure, I thought I saw women dressed in black, with her head and face covered by a black veil, duck behind a tree as we approached the road and parked car. Hiding so we wouldn't see her. But I caught a glimpse, enough to reveal the rope of lustrous pearls she wore. Pearls that were there for a thin white hand to lift and nervously, out of long habit, twist and untwist into a knot. Only one women I knew did that--and she was the perfect one to wear black, and should run to hide!Forever hide! Color all her days black! Every last one!

We will not open healed wounds!""My wounds are not healed!" I stated just as firmly. "They will never be healed until justice is done!

I remembered Grandmere Catherine used to tell me your first impressions about people usually prove to be the truest because your heart is the first to react.

Little girls get hurt when they play grown-up games.

Sometimes doing the right thing does take more courage, but the feeling it gives you deep inside makes it worth it.

And when I fall in love,” I began, "I will build a mountain to touch the sky. Then, my lover and I will have the best of both worlds, reality firmly under our feet, while we have our heads in the clouds with all our illusions still intact. And the purple grass will grow all around, high enough to reach our eyes.

Candy. He spoke of candy. Was he still in the child's world where candy stood for something sweet enough to hold back tears? I had grown older, and had lost enthusiasm for childish delights. I wanted what every teenager wants -- freedom to develop into a woman, freedom to have full control over my life! Though I tried to tell him this, my voice had dried up along with my tears.

Children are very wiseintuitively; they know who loves them most, and who only pretends.

Go on, glare your eyes at me, and cry and plead, and talk tome about money and what it can buy. But it can't buy back a child once he's dead!

We haven't remained idle, twiddling our thumbs while you were off having a good time. Through books Cathy and I have lived a zillion lives . . . our vicarious way to feel alive.

Look at you, standing there in your iron- gray dress, feeling piousand self- righteous while you starve small children!

Then turn your eyes back on me,and tell me that Cathy and I are still children to be treated with condescension, and are incapable of understanding adult subjects.

Then turn your eyes back on me,and tell me that Cathy and I are still children to be treated with condescension, and are incapable of understanding adult subjects. We haven'tremained idle, twiddling our thumbs while you were off having a good time.

And why is it all men thinkeverything a woman writes is trivial or trashy-or just plain sillydrivel? Don't men have romantic notions? Don't men dream of findingthe perfect love?

God, He didn't write the scripts for the puny little players downhere.We wrote them ourselves-with each day we lived, each word we spoke,each thought we etched on our brains. And Momma had written herscript, too.And a sorry one it was.

What's doneis done. Say good-bye to the past, and hello to the future And we'rewasting time, when already we've wasted enough. We've got everythingahead, waiting for us."Just the right words to make me feel real, alive, free! Free enough toforget thoughts of revenge.

We all have to love you, and believe inyou, and think you are looking out for our best interests. But look at us, Momma, and really see us.

Once I was in the cold dim room, without furniture or carpet or rugs, only a dollhouse that wasn't as wonderful as the original, I opened the tall and narrow closet door and began my ascent up the steep and narrow stairs. On my way to the attic.On my way to where I'd find my Christopher, again...

I had heard the wind from the mountains calling me last night, telling me it was my time to go, and I woke up, knowing what to do.

I was the last of the four Dresden dolls. Only me... and I didn't want to be here.

The sun was hot and bright. A day for fishing, for swimming, for playing tennis and having fun, and they put my Christopher in the ground.

Only I had dry eyes, a dry heart.

And grief, no matter how you try to cater to its wail, has a way of fading away, and the person so real, so beloved, becomes a dim, slightly out-of-focus shadow.

Was I prone to sadness and melancholy? How could anyone like that? It wasn't that I wanted it; it was that I was so used to hard rains, I couldn't help expecting a cloudburst every time something nice happened and sunshine beamed down over me.

If you hold a bird too tightly, you'll crush its wings

We're better off not worrying about ourselves, and to do that, we have to worry about others.

I used to have this toy, a magic slate. You wrote or drew on it and then, just by pulling up the plastic cover, everything you did disappeared and you could start new. Maybe everyone feels that on New Year's Eve: They can pull up the magic sheet and rewrite their lives.

Yes, I am a prisoner of sorts, but my prison isn't the house. It's my own thoughts that lock me up!

We're going to change. We're going to throw out what's worse in usand keep what's best. But come hell or high water, we three will sticktogether, all for one, one for all. We're going to grow, Cathy,physically, mentally, and emotionally. Not only that, we're going toreach the goals we've set for ourselves. I'll be the best damneddoctor the world's ever known and you will make Pavlova seem like anawkward country girl.

All pain seemed to come with lots of blood, and lots of mental anguish, too. I already knew about that. Maybe that was the worst kind of pain, because nobody knew about it but you.

Then the wind came in with Bart and blew the vase of roses from the table. I stood and stared down at the crystal pieces and the petals scattered about. Why was the wind always trying to tell me something? Something I didn't want to hear!

Cathy, don't look so defeated. She was only trying to put us downagain.Maybe nothing did work out right for her, but that doesn't mean we aredoomed. Let's go forth tomorrow with no great expectations of findingperfection. Then, expecting only a small share of happiness, we won'tbe disappointed."If a little hill of happiness would satisfy Chris, good for him. Butafter all these years of striving, hoping, dreaming, longing-I wanted amountain high! A hill wasn't enough. From this day forward, I vowedto myself, I was in control of my life. Not fate, notGod, not even Chris was ever again going to tell me what to do, ordominate me in any way. From this day forward, I was my own person, totake what I would, when I would, and I would answer only to myself. I'dbeen kept prisoner, held captive by greed. I'd been betrayed,deceived, tied to, used, poisoned ... but all that was over now.

From this day forward, I vowedto myself, I was in control of my life. Not fate, notGod, not even Chris was ever again going to tell me what to do, ordominate me in any way. From this day forward, I was my own person, totake what I would, when I would, and I would answer only to myself.

In the dark, the little live Christmas tree, two feet tall, sparkled with tiny coloured lights, like the tears I saw glistening in my brother's eyes.

A Colder breeze lifted a dead leaf to the roof and sent it scuttling merrily on its way to catch in my hair. It crackled dry and brittle when Chris plucked it out and held it, just staring down at a dead maple leaf as if his very life depended on reading its secret for knowing how to blow in the wind. No arms, no legs, no wings... bit it could fly when dead.

You are an intriguing combination, half child, half seductress, half angel."I laughed sort and bitterly. "That's what all men like to think about women. Little girls they have to take care of--when I know for a fact it is the male who is more boy than man.

Or was Chris thinking, as I was, that if we went tothe police and told our story, our faces would be splashed on the frontpages of every newspaper in the country? Would the glare of publicitymake up for what we'd lose? Our privacy-our need to stay together?Could we lose each other just to get even?

Promises are lies wrapped in pretty ribbons -Cinnamon

The Bible said, as Chris quoted one memorable day, there was a time foreverything. I figured my time for happiness was just ahead, waitingfor me.

Love is fragile at best and often a burden or something that blinds us. It's fodder for poets and song writers and they build it into something beyond human capacity. Falling in love means enrolling yourself in the school of disappointment. Being human means failing each other often, and no two people fail each other more than two people who pledge to do things for each other that they'll never do because they are just incapable of it...That's why art is enduring. The look of love or hope, or the look of compassion, bravery, whatever, is captured forever. We spend our lives trying to get someone to be as enduring as a painting or a sculpture and we can't because feelings crumble as quickly as the flesh.

You know what I miss the most about my youth? My gullibility. It's nice believing in everything and everyone. It makes you feel secure, but be strong and depend more on yourself and you'll be ready for disappointments. That's the best advice I can offer you.

You were right the first time, Cathy. It was a stupid, silly story.Ridiculous! Only insane people would die for the sake of love. I'llbet you a hundred to one a woman wrote that junky romantic trash!"Just a minute ago I'd despised that author for bringing about such amiserable ending, then there I went, rushing to the defense. "T. M.Ellis could very well have been a man! Though I doubt any woman writerin the nineteenth century had much chance of being published, unlessshe used her initials, or a man's name. And why is it all men thinkeverything a woman writes is trivial or trashy-or just plain sillydrivel? Don't men have romantic notions? Don't men dream of findingthe perfect love? And it seems to me, that Raymond was far moremushy-minded than Lily!

It's funny how when you're little, you miss all the little lies. They float right past you, but you don't wonder about them much. For a long time, you think this is just something adults still do after being kids - pretend. Then one day you wake up and realize most of the world you're in is built on someone's make-believe.

Whatever doesn't destroy you, makes you stronger. Hardships have a way of toughening us, if they don't kill us.

All right, Chris, you've given me a breather. I'm prepared foranything.And thank you for saying all of that, and for loving me, for youhaven't gone unloved, or unadmired, yourself." I kissed him quickly onthe lips, and told him to go on, to hit me with his knockout blow."Really, Chris, I know you must have something perfectly awful to tellme-so out with it. Keep holding me as you tell me, and I can standanything you have to say.

I saw myself dancing alone, always alone,

After it's all over, the early childhood, a chain of birthdays woven with candlelight, piles of presents, voices of relatives singing and praising your promise and future, after the years of schooling, fitting yourself into different size desks, memorizing, reciting, reporting, and performing for jury after jury of teachers, counselors, and administrators, you still feel inadequate, alone, vulnerable, and naked in a world that can be unforgiving and terribly demanding.

I don't think she's ever coming back.

Love, in short is the most dangerous emotion human can experience

We had been separated by time and distance and events so long, it was as if we had to get to know each other again, but if it was possible to fall in love with the same person twice, I did.

Cathy, don't look so defeated. She was only trying to put us downagain.Maybe nothing did work out right for her, but that doesn't mean we aredoomed. Let's go forth tomorrow with no great expectations of findingperfection. Then, expecting only a small share of happiness, we won'tbe disappointed.

The mountain trees that grew between the pines were a brilliant blaze of fall colors, like fire against the emerald green of the pines, firs and pruces. And it was, as I'd told myself long ago, the year's last passionate love affair before it grew old and died from the frosty bite of winter.

-just on the verge ofbecoming a woman, and in these three years and almost five months, I'dreached maturity. I was older than the mountains outside. The wisdomof the attic was in my bones, etched on my brain, part of my flesh.

Beauty thinks it needs no talent and can feed on itself, so it soon dies.

For when Iwaltzed with Chris, I'd made him someone else.

Chris was in the rocker, fully clothed, and was strumming idly onCory's guitar. "Dance, ballerina, dance," he softly chanted, and hissinging voice wasn't bad at all. Maybe we could work as musicians---atrio -if Carrie ever recovered enough to want a voice again.

If a little hill of happiness would satisfy Chris, good for him. Butafter all these years of striving, hoping, dreaming, longing-I wanted amountain high! A hill wasn't enough.

You are an intriguing combination, half child, half seductress, half angel.

And thank you for saying all of that, and for loving me, for you haven't gone unloved, or unadmired, yourself.

Being rich and coming from a distinguished family background doesn't guarantee happiness, Abby. In fact, it might make happiness harder to find because you have to live up to akk that expectation.

Maybe that was what millions could do-- nail a satisfied smirk to one's face.

That's the way all life's battles are won.. You don't look at the overall picture. You take one step, then another, and another... until you arrive at your destination.

...I'm a fool. I expect too much, then I'm angry because nothing ever works out the way I want. When I was young and full of hopes and aspirations, I didn't know I would get hurt so often. I think I'll get tough and won't ache again, then my fragile shell shatters, and again, symbolically, my blood is spilled with the tears I shed. I pull myself back together again, go on, convince myself there is a reason for everything, and at some point in my life it will be disclosed. And when I have what I want, I hope to god it stays long enough to let me know I have it, and it wont hurt when it goes, for I don't expect it to stay, not now. I'm like a doughnut, always being punch out in the middle, and constantly I go around searching for the missing piece, and on and on it goes, never ending, only beginning...