You don't realize what you're going to get, and you can't prepare yourself for it.

Once there was a princess who was very beautiful. She shone bright as the stars on a moonless night. But what difference did it make that she was beautiful? None. No difference." Why did it make no difference?" asked Abilene. Because," said Pellegrina, "She was a princess who loved no one and cared nothing for love, even though there were many who loved her.

There are those hearts, reader, that never mend again once they are broken. Or if they do mend, they heal themselves in a crooked and lopsided way, as if sewn together by a careless craftsman. Such was the fate of Chiaroscuro. His heart was broken. Picking up the spoon and placing it on his head, speaking of revenge, these things helped him to put his heart together again. But it was, alas, put together wrong.

I am single and childless, but I have lots of friends and I am an aunt to three lovely children.

All of that loneliness and longing in my heart got transferred into the book Because of Winn-Dixie, I guess.

Holly McGhee said I should come to dinner with them. That first dinner, I said something pretty smart-alecky, and Alison [McGhee] laughed really hard at it. It made me happy.

There is a lot of love in him, a lot of love in his heart...And he is up there with no one and nothing to love. It is a bad thing to have love and no where to put it.