Maud Hart Lovelace

“That's the way you have to be with boys," said Betsy. "Beam about their old football when you're dying to know whether they're going to take you to a party.”

“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?”

“What would life be like without her writing? Writing filled her life with beauty and mystery, gave it life...and promise.”

“Betsy. The great war is on but I hope ours is over. Please come home. Joe.”

“Sam!” cried Carney. “I’m afraid I lost the flashlight, but…” That was all she said for Sam took her in his arms. Holding her tightly he kissed her muddy face, not once but several times.”

“Carney was hatless and gloveless, wearing her pink linen. Sam looked at her more than once.“its just because he likes pink,” she told herself.”

“Then he kissed her. Betsy didn't believe in letting boys kiss you. She thought it was silly to be letting first this boy and then that one kiss you, when it didn't mean a thing. But it was wonderful when Joe Willard kissed her. And it did mean a thing.”

“You might as well learn right now, you two, that the poorest guide you can have in life is what people will say.”

“Thoughts are such fleet magic things. Betsy's thoughts swept a wide arc while Uncle Keith read her poem aloud. She thought of Julia learning to sing with Mrs. Poppy. She thought of Tib learning to dance. She thought of herself and Tacy and Tib going into their 'teens. She even thought of Tom and Herbert and of how, by and by, they would be carrying her books and Tacy's and Tib's up the hill from high school.”

“They soon stopped being ten years old. But whatever age they were seemed to be exactly the right age for having fun.”

“Betsy was so full of joy that she had to be alone. She went upstairs to her bedroom and sat down on Uncle Keith's trunk. Behind Tacy's house the sun had set. A wind had sprung up and the trees, their color dimmed, moved under a brooding sky. All the stories she had told Tacy and Tib seemed to be dancing in those trees, along with all the stories she planned to write some day and all the stories she would read at the library. Good stories. Great stories. The classics. Not Rena's novels.”

“Well, Betsy," he said, "your mother tells me that you are going to use Uncle Keith's trunk for a desk. That's fine. You need a desk. I've often noticed how much you like to write. The way you eat up those advertising tablets from the store! I never saw anything like it. I can't understand it though. I never write anything but checks myself. ""Bob!" said Mrs. Ray. "You wrote the most wonderful letters to me before we were married. I still have them, a big bundle of them. Every time I clean house I read them over and cry.""Cry, eh?" said Mr. Ray, grinning. "In spite of what your mother says, Betsy, if you have any talent for writing, it comes from family. Her brother Keith was mighty talented, and maybe you are too. Maybe you're going to be a writer."Betsy was silent, agreeably abashed."But if you're going to be a writer," he went on, "you've got to read. Good books. Great books. The classics.”

“Betsy did not answer. She was a talker, her family always said, but sometimes when she most wanted to talk she couldn't say a word.”

“Betsy liked to read her stories aloud and she read them like an actress. She made her voice low and thrillingly deep. She made it shake with emotion. She laughed mockingly and sobbed wildly when the occasion required.”

“It looks like something out of Whittier's "Snowbound,"' Julia said. Julia could always think of things like that to say.”

“The wastes of snow on the hill were ghostly in the moonlight. The stars were piercingly bright.”

“Come in early, so there'll be time to pop corn,' Mrs. Ray said. If she mentioned popping corn, they always came in early. So she usually mentioned it.”

“Betsy liked to talk. Her father always said she got it from her mother, and her mother always said she got it from her father. But whomever she got it from she was certainly a talker.”

“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.”

“Julia was as happy as Betsy was, almost. One nice thing about Julia was that she rejoiced in other people's luck.”

“This was Betsy and Tacy's private corner. Betsy's mother was a great believer in people having private corners, and the piano box was plainly meant to belong to Betsy and Tacy, for it fitted them so snugly.”

“This going around with boys makes me sick," said Tacy."I like Herbert Humphreys," said Tib.It was just like Tib to like a boy and say so."Oh, if you have to have a boy around, it might as well be Herbert," said Betsy, who liked him too."He wears cute clothes," said Tacy, blushing.Herbert Humphreys, who had come to Deep Valley from St. Paul, wore knickerbockers. The other boys in their grade wore plain short pants.”

“A house with nothing old in it seems - unseasoned.”

“We have to build our lives out of what materials we have. It's as though we were given a heap of blocks and told to build a house.”

“I'm finished with something, but I'm not beginning anything. That's wrong. When you finish something, you ought always to begin something new.”

“In silence the three of them looked at the sunset and thought about God.”

“It was June, and the world smelled of roses. The sunshine was like powdered gold over the grassy hillside.”

“And yet, even as she spoke, she knew that she did not wish to come back. not to stay, not to live. She loved the little yellow cottage more than she loved any place on earth. but she was through with it except in her memories. ”

“Say, you told me you thought Les Miserables was the greatest novel ever written. I think Vanity Fair is the greatest. Let's fight. - Joe Willard”

“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.”

“You have two numbers in your age when you are ten. It's the beginning of growing up.”

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

“We'll just have to find more flowers in the spring. That's when they bloom, tra la.”

“One strain could call up the quivering expectancy of Christmas Eve, childhood, joy and sadness, the lonely wonder of a star”

“The silence in the room had width, height, depth, mass and substance.”

“When there are boys you have to worry about how you look, and whether they like you, and why they like another girl better, and whether they're going to ask you to something or other. It's a strain.”

“She thought of the library, so shining white and new; the rows and rows of unread books; the bliss of unhurried sojourns there and of going out to a restaurant, alone, to eat.”

“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?”