My darling girl, when are you going to realize that being normal is not necessarily a virtue? It rather denotes a lack of courage." - Aunt Frances

I read Betty Smith's "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," all of Shirley Jackson's books, which I loved.

I wept to think that life went on even when so much had been lost, that rain still fell and myrtle grew between the rocks.

I knew what it was to yearn for a life so distant it seemed that it had never been anything more than a dream.

It was the sort of beauty you feel so deeply it becomes contagious and somehow makes you feel beautiful too.

Trouble is just like love, after all; it comes in unannounced and takes over before you've had a chance to reconsider, or even to think.

We are only an instant, that's true. But we are eternal.