Trouble can always be borne when it is shared.

It wasn't so much that he minded telling Leslie that he was afraid to go; it was that he minded being afraid. It was as though he had been made with a great piece missing - one of May Belle's puzzles with this huge gap where somebody's eye should have been. Lord, it would be better to be born without an arm than to go through life with no guts.

We're alike, Jess would tell himself, me and Miss Edmunds . . . We don't belong at Lark Creek, Julia and me.

You have to believe it and you hate it. I don't have to and I think it's beautiful.

February is just plain malicious. It knows your defenses are down.

As I look back on what I have written, I can see that the very persons who have taken away my time are those who have given me something to say.

My writing comes from ideas that make a sound in my heart.