Was life always like that? she wondered. A game of hide and seek in which you only occasionally found the person you wanted to be?

I cannot remember back to a year in which I did not consider myself to be a writer, and the younger I was the bigger that capital 'W.

People were always saying to Margaret, 'Well, Julia sings and Betsy writes. Now what is little Margaret going to do?' Margaret would smile politely, for she was very polite, but privately she stormed to Betsy with flashing eyes, 'I'm not going to do anything. I want to just live. Can't people just live?

Betsy returned to her chair, took off her coat and hat, opened her book and forgot the world again.

She tried to act as though it were nothing to go to the library alone. But her happiness betrayed her. Her smile could not be restrained, and it spread from her tightly pressed mouth, to her round cheeks, almost to the hair ribbons tied in perky bows over her ears.

Good things come, but they're never perfect; are they? You have to twist them into something perfect.

Isn't it mysterious to begin a new journal like this? I can run my fingers through the fresh clean pages but I cannot guess what the writing on them will be.