“Everybody gives you belief for the asking,” she said to David, “and so few people give you anything more to believe in than your own belief—just not letting you down, that's all. It's so hard to find a person who accepts responsibilities beyond what you ask.' 'So easy to be loved - so hard to love.' David answered.

I can't read or sleep. Without hope or youth or money I sit constantly wishing I were dead.

Don't you think I was made for you? I feel like you had me ordered - and I was delivered to you - to be worn. I want you to wear me, like a watch-charm or a buttonhole bouquet.

Being in love, she concluded, is simply a presentation of our pasts to another individual, mostly packages so unwieldy that we can no longer manage the loosened strings alone.

Look closer and you'll see something extraordinary, mystifying, something real and true. We have never been what we seemed.

It seemed to Alabama that, reaching her goal, she would drive the devils that had driven her - that, in proving herself, she would achieve that peace which she imagined went only in surety of one’s self - that she would be able, through the medium of the dance, to command her emotions, to summon love or pity or happiness at will, having provided a channel through which they might flow. She drove herself mercilessly, and the summer dragged on.

People are like almanacs, Bonnie - you never can find the information you're looking for, but the casual reading is well worth the trouble.