Never trust an ugly woman. She's got a grudge against the world,' said Grandma who was no oil painting herself.

[A young adult novel] ends not with happily ever after, but at a new beginning, with the sense of a lot of life yet to be lived.

Writing is communication, not self-expression. Nobody in this world wants to read your diary except your mother.

But put two librarians' heads together, and mountains move.

...they'd just tell you to turn the other cheek, wouldn't they?...Trouble is, Mrs. Dowdel observed, after you've turned the other cheek four times, you run out of cheeks.

The years went by, and Mary Alice and I grew up, Slower than we wanted to, faster than we realized.

With the poetry of plain speaking, Shannon Hitchcock recreates the daily drama of a vanished world.