It's possible to pretend I'm someone other than who I am, and if I pretend long enough, I can believe it.

Evie hadn’t always felt that way. For a year after James had died, she’d cupped his half-dollar pendant between her pressed palms and prayed fervently for a miracle, for a telegram that would say GOOD NEWS! IT WAS A TERRIBLE MISTAKE, AND PRIVATE JAMES XAVIER O’NEILL HAS BEEN FOUND, SAFE, IN A FARMHOUSE IN FRANCE. But no such telegram ever arrived, and whatever possible faith might have bloomed in Evie withered and died. Now she saw it as just another advertisement for a life that belonged to a previous generation and held no meaning for hers.

Please do not strain yourself, Miss Doyle. I won't have my girls going cross-eyed in the name of art.

She wished she were as inconsequential as the ghosts in her dreams.

These are hard times. The world hurts. We live in fear and forget to walk with hope. But hope has not forgotten you. So ask it to dinner. It's probably hungry and would appreciate the invitation.

Just once I’d like to meet a fella who isn’t a phony. Somebody who doesn’t wanna buy me a fur so he can show me off to his boys.

Why does everyone want to own me?" Pippa mumbles. She's got her head in her hands. "Why do they all want to control my life -- how I look, whom I see, what I do or don't do? Why can't they just let me alone?" "Because you're beautiful," Ann answers, watching the fire lick her palm. "People always think they can own beautiful things.