It was so simple that a flash of astonishment that felt like pain shot through her head. Education! That was it! It was education that made the difference! Education would pull them ut of the grame and dirt.

She had had the pain; it had been like being boiled alive in scalding oil and not being able to die to get free of it

Because the child must have a valuable thing which is called imagination. The child must have a secret world in which live things that never were. It is necessary that she believe. She must start out believing in things not of this world. Then when the world becomes too ugly for living in, the child can reach back and live in her imagination.

It was the last time she’d see the river from that window. The last time of anything has the poignancy of death itself. This that I see now, she thought, to see no more this way. Oh, the last time how clearly you see everything; as though a magnifying light had been turned on it. And you grieve because you hadn’t held it tighter when you had it every day.

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

I can never give a 'yes' or a 'no.' I don't believe everything in life can be settled by a monosyllable.

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