In teaching your child, do not forget that suffering is good too. It makes a person rich in character.

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

Dear God," she prayed, "let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry...have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere - be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.

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 reading, the observing, the living from day to day. It was something that had been born into her and her only - the something different from anyone else in the two families. It was what God or whatever is His equivalent puts into each soul that is given life - the one different thing such as that which makes no two fingerprints on the face of the earth alike.

A child forgets a time of hunger but never forgets the aching want of other things.

And always, there was the magic of learning things.