“How the hell would she support herself and her mother if Agua Dulce’s new owner built one of those mega service stations right next door? Or worse yet, right on top of them.”

“There would be no one to live for her during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature.”

“How ghastly for her, people actually thinking, with their brains, and right next door. Oh, the travesty of it all.”

“And it was no shame to her that she so dreamed. It was no shame that she called before her, one by one, those who had asked her to cross with them the threshold (of marriage) and those who might still ask her. It was no shame that, while her heart said always, "no," she still waited - waited for one whom she knew not, but only knew that she would know him when he came. And it was no shame to her that, even while this was so, she saw herself in the years to come a wife and mother. ”

“The shop owner did not try to push the book on any of her customers. She knew that in the wrong hands such a book could easily be dismissed, or, worse, go unread. Instead she let it sit where it was in the hope that the right reader might discover it.”

“... If there are twenty identical doors in the corridor and you need somebody to enter one of them, what would you do? That’s right, put „No entry“ sign on the right door. Visit is guaranteed”