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!

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.

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.

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!

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

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.

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.