Rebecca Wells

“Do you think any of us know how to love?! Do you think anybody would ever do anything if they waited until they knew how to love?! Do you think that babies would ever get made or meals cooked or crops planed or books written or what God-damn-have-you? Do you think people would even get out of bed in the morning if they waited until they knew how to love? You have had too much therapy. Or not enough. God knows how to love, kiddo. The rest of us are only good actors.Forget love. Try good manners.”

“You can't let fear of hurricanes stop your from putting seeds in the ground, even if they're going to grow tall only to be destroyed.”

“[T]he right way to pray is not to beg, but to picture good things, to banish all bad things from our mind.”

“[D]ance can become prayer and prayer can become dance.”

“Nothing picks me up quicker than a movie, a Coca-Cola, and a box of popcorn. I could walk in feeling like I didn't want to live anymore, and walk out on cloud nine.”

“The alligators can get you at any age, Buddy. But the worst thing you can do is freeze.”

“Sometimes lost treasures can be reclaimed.”

“The point is not knowing another person, or learning to love another person. The point is simply this: how tender can we bear to be?”

“It's life, Sidda. You just climb on the beast and ride.”

“Life is short, but wide.”

“Tears will do you no good.”

“God will not allow us to be overwhelmed by temptation, but with it He will provide a way of escape so that we will be able to endure it.”

“You cannot escape from life. Life is not a book. You can't just set it down on the coffee table and walk away from it when it gets boring or you get tired.”

“When I'm reading, wherever I am, I'm always somewhere else.”

“Books are living things with blood and bones, and it breaks our heart when people dissect them.”

“Glorious theater. It creates family for all kinds of orphans. -- Wade Coenen in "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood”

“Connor: [about Sidda and Connor's wedding] Vivi, it's taken years to nail down a date. She's always said, "What's the rush, when things are so good?" I don't know what the hell she's so afraid of - it's like she's always waiting for the bottom to drop out. Vivi: You know why she thinks that, don't ya, honey? Because it did. It always did.”

“You know how some people, when they're together, they somehow make you feel more hopeful? Make you feel like the world is not the insane place it really is?”

“It was the kind... of Southern women... who believe... that it is impossible to arrive in a new place without a pair of shoes to match every possible change of clothes.”

“I wish I knew then what I know now - and still had those thighs!”

“I can't help it, I'm an addict.''Don't corrupt the word 'addict,' Goddamnit,' Caro said. 'I'm fed up with everybody claiming they're addicted. You're just a ponderer, Sidda, that's all.”

“The moon loved them. Not because they were beautiful, or because they were perfect, or because they were perky, but because they were her darling daughters.”

“As Vivi drove, it seemed that not only the Ya-Ya's bodies but the earth and sky were sweating. The very air they breathed was almost a juice. Moonlight spilled down into the convertible, onto the four friends' shoulders and knees and on the tops of their heads, so that their hair seemed to have little sparks shooting off it. Vivi had no idea at all where she was headed, but she knew that whatever direction she went, her friends would go with her.”

“The words shot through Vivi's bones and blood and muscle, and her body relaxed, so that when her feet touched the ground they met the earth differently, as though they had found roots that reached deep down and anchored to something tender and undamaged.”

“Those porch girls had no idea they were going to sprawl on that couch until the weight of their adolescent bodies sank down into the pillows. They have no idea when they will get up off that couch. They have no plans for what will happen next. They only know their bodies touching as they try to keep cool. They only know that the coolest spot they can find is in front of that rotary fan.I want to lay up like that, to float unstructured, without ambition or anxiety. I want to inhibit my life like a porch.”

“She's smiling that smile they smile before they grow bosoms.”

“Sometimes I wonder if any of us are cut out for the lives we lead.”

“Zip it kiddo. Don't ever admit you know a thing about cooking or it'll be used against you later in life.”

“Good enough is good enough. Perfect will make you a big fat mess every time.”

“Every time I thought that I was "put together," I realized that we're always putting ourselves together, gathering the world in, letting it sift down and form us.”

“Because I miss them. Because I need them. Because I love them.”

“She breathed in the vast world of suffering and pure, dark love, and as she did, a well of compassion began to flow in her.”

“When the Deep Purple falls,Over sleepy garden walls, And the stars begin to flicker in the sky,Thru the mist of a memoryYou wander back to me,Breathing my name with a sigh.In the still of the night,Once again I hold you tight, Tho' you're gone, your love lives onWhen moonlight beams.And as long as my heart will beatLover, we'll always meetHere in my Deep Purple dreams.”

“You don't get no trophies for livin the life you born into. It just be your job, and you lucky if you can do the work set out in front of you and not fret if it seem puny. Chaney, Little Altars Everywhere”

“They wanted to rock, they wanted to roll, they wanted to feel the peculiarly human feeling of having a perfect night in an imperfect world.”

“What they don't know is that I went over the edge years ago, and lived to tell the tale.”

“Many people are more like the earth than we know. Maybe they have fault lines that sooner or later are going to split open under pressure.”

“It kills me to think I didn't spot her headed for the rocks. Friends are supposed to act like harbor boats-let you know if you're off course.”

“These are all I have. I do not have the wide, bright beacon of some solid old lighthouse, guiding ships safely home, past the jaggedrocks. I only have these little glimmers that flicker and then go out.”

“Sadness can find you anywhere, anytime, so you better have fun when you can.”

“... a full moon shimmered over central Louisiana. This was no rinky-dink moon. This was a moon you had to curtsy to. A big, heavy, mysterious, beautiful, bossy moon. The kind you want to serve things to on a silver platter.”

“The notes danced through the June air; Vivi could feel them dust her hair and shoulders. She could feel the notes enter her and settle deep into her bones.”

“Mama parted with these Divine Secrets because I asked her to, Sidda thought. the reason I feel like crying, Sidda realized, is not just because this scrapbook is vulnerable, but because Mama, whether she knows it or not, has made herself so vulnerable to me.”

“Sidda was tired of being vigilant, alert, sharp. She longed for porch friendship, for the sticky, hot sensation of familiar female legs thrown over hers in companionship. She pined for the girlness of it all, the unplanned, improvisational laziness. She wanted to soak the words "time management" out of her lexicon. She wanted to hand over, to yield, to let herself float down into the uncharted beautiful fertile musky swamp of life, where creativity and eroticism and deep intelligence dwell.”

“life is short but it is wide. this too shall pass.”

“Say there is no truth. Say there are only scraps that we feebly try to sew togethr.”

“Shep claimed eating cake like that so early in the morning was a 'whore's breakfast.' The rest of them didn't care. They were happy little whores who didn't worry about saving a morsel. ”

“True love is not a crock, but patriotism is.”

“She walks barefoot into the humid night, moonlight on her freckled shoulders. Near a huge, live oak tree on the edge of her father's cotton fields, Sidda looks up into the sky. In the crook of the crescent moon sits the Holy Lady, with strong muscles and a merciful heart. She kicks her splendid legs like the moon is her swing and the sky, her front porch. She waves down at Sidda like she has just spotted an old buddy.Sidda stands in the moonlight and lets the Blessed Mother love every hair on her six-year-old head. Tenderness flows down from the moon and up from the earth. For one fleeting, luminous moment, Sidda Walker knows there has never been a time when she has not been loved.”

“Of all the secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood the most divine was humor.”