“Trouble was, everyone always made talking out a problem sound like it was so simple and solved everything, but actually doing it, and securing the desired outcome without screwing up, seemed about as easy as rowing upriver with a teaspoon.”

“The worst thing was that her school-friends began to copy her. They thought it was dead cool to be a little monster like Lucretia Crum!”

“You see, Ana men think that anything that comes out of a woman's mouth is a problem to be solved. Not some vague idea that we'd like to kick around and talk about for a while and then forget. Men prefer action.”

“... There is a publication classification in an upper corner. It reads Religion. I'm immediately skeptical <...> because I've always group books such as this in a category with crap like Astrology, Aromatherapy, Crystalology, Pyramid Power, Psychic Healing and Feng Shui <...> that anyone would actually believe that these things could solve their problems, really solve them, instead of just making them forget about them for a while, is asinine to me...”

“Reading always calmed me down: filling my head with other - made up - people's problems and conflicts made my own seem less terrible, less real.”

“It was always so hot, and everyone was so polite, and everything was all surface but underneath it was like a bomb waiting to go off. I always felt that way about the South, that beneath the smiles and southern hospitality and politeness were a lot of guns and liquor and secrets.”

“Why do we focus so intensely on our problems? What draws us to them? Why are they so attractive? They have the magnet power of love: somehow we desire our problems; we are in love with them much as we want to get rid of them . . . Problems sustain us -- maybe that's why they don't go away. What would a life be without them? Completely tranquilized and loveless . . . There is a secret love hiding in each problem”