I'd pretty much given up hope of being published, so I just wrote the book I wanted to read.

She doesn't know I cry for the changing times. That just as I reread favourite books, some small part of me hoping for a different ending, I find myself hoping against hope that the war will never come. That this time, somehow, it will leave us be.

I've heard it said that children born to stressful times never shake the air of woe . . . .

You'll beat this. I know it doesn't feel like it, but you will. You're a survivor." "I don't want to survive it." "I know that, too," Nell had said. "And it's fair enough. But sometimes we don't have a choice.

I'd pretty much given up hope of being published, so I just wrote the book I wanted to read.

... for home is a magnet that lures back even its most abstracted children.

Happiness in life is not a given, it must be seized.