Suzanne Palmieri

“Here's a secret to love," she said. "Always make sure that the man loves you just a breath more than you love him.""Oh Mimi, I love your Papa more than any woman ever loved any man. And still, he loves me a breath more. It's the only healthy way. If a woman loves too much- if her love is heavier- she won't see anything but him. She'll be blind to the world. Women are made like that. We have to teach ourselves not to become obsessed. True love lies in peace, not torture.”

“Cooper smelled damage a mile away. He knew she'd never run. She'd never tell.”

“No matter how silly I think it all is, society is still society and we are not free of the burdens of hate.”

“Spring came slowly to the Bronx with a lot of rain & soft water-color tree blossoms.”

“But was it fate? Or was it our doing? I don't know.”

“I can still feel them there. His lips on mine. His words in my ear that day."Itsy, say you'll be my girl. My secret. Oh, please say it.”

“What did you say to me Itsy? The day when you broke your silence?"Itsy shrugged and shuffled back into her own apartment.”

“Love should never be a secret and it should never, ever be forgotten.”

“The only problem is the heart is quiet. It takes a very special kind of person to hear what the heart says. Most can't hear it at all and they have to guess. There are a lot of people walking around just guessing.”

“Do you love her?' she asked him.'Always have,' he said.'Then why in the world would you leave her alone?”

“I wouldn't want to live that life. I choose the pain. I chose the pain.”

“A game like sardines is scary, not so much for the hider but for the seekers. It's scary because you lose your companions and the whole world creeps up quiet and you slowly realize you're going to stumble upon a secret place where everyone will jump out at you. And then, when you are the very last seeker, you start to wonder if you're the only person in the world. If the hiding place somehow sucked up the players and the last one has to decide to run away or get sucked up, too.”

“You. You are standing in your own way. And that means whatever it is scares you. It won't forever...but take your time. Nothing good was ever rushed.”

“Magic is a funny term,' she'd say. 'There is nothing supernatural about the earth. As long as you know what does what.”

“The truth is, time marches on and you have two choices: You move forward, come what may, and you experience all the sour and sweet things that fly at you from around corners, or you sit still. Don't sit still.”

“The air between them began to settle into a silence. Awkward, yet softly exciting. Like an unexpected snow day.”

“Sometimes it's the smallest secrets that hold the most hope, the most fun, the most danger.”

“She remembered reading somewhere that Eskimos had a hundred words for snow. Eleanor wished there were a hundred ways to say her name. She thought, maybe, if her name was howled from all corners of the world, in a million different voices, that she might explode into a cloud of snow. Light and separate, her parts floating down onto the world in a series of beautiful crystalline moments.”

“I'm a Lost Witch. Are you a Lost Witch too?”