Megan Lindholm

“I am not a vine, to twist my life and twine about a strong column like yourself. Rather we have been as two strong trees that grew side by side, but must eventually lean apart from one another. You would not have me in your shade, would you, stunted and misshapen?”

“If one must have a worst enemy, it is best to choose a former lover, who will know best how to tempt and torment.”

“You needed the bitter edges of life to make it real, to let you taste what was still sweet.”

“Sometimes the fruit is sweet, and sometimes it is sour. It is always fruit, and we eat it. So it is with the days we are given. Some are sweet, and some are not.”

“Music took her somewhere, and I used to wonder where. I thought it was dumb, the way she lived for a collection of sounds, for someone else's words and notes.”

“The only magic that's left in the world right now is the magic that we make ourselves, deliberately. You're not going to stumble over enchantment by chance. You have to be open to it, looking for it, and when you first think you might have glimpsed it, you have to will it into your life with every machination available to you.”

“Down at the old house, I’ve made a serious effort to rejuvenate what was once my garden and lawn. And I’ve been rewarded with all sorts of forgotten and neglected plants making surprise appearances. Random daffodils and narcissus. A fairy rose that I thought was gone forever. And, despite some very enthusiastic pruning by the local deer population, the little plum trees look as if they will survive. There is one that is very battered as the deer used it to rub the velvet off their antlers, but it is sending up some shoots and it may yet live for another year. So. Spring. The most forgiving season of the year.”