“There's real trouble in the world. The kind that can't be fixed. The kind we lie awake keeping vigil against. Love is not trouble. It's all we have to light our days, to bring music to the time we've been given.”

“Teedie and Johnnie didn't have much in common--but they shared a love of the outdoors. They both loved a good story, too. And that was enough to change America.”

“There are two kinds of books in the world--the boring kind they make you read in school and the interesting kind that they won't let you read in school because then they would have to talk about real stuff like sex and divorce and is there a God and if there isn't then what happens when you die, and how come the history books have so many lies in them.”

“Tired, but not the kind of tired that sleep fixes.”

“As mothers, we are building great cathedrals. We cannot be seen if we're doing it right. And one day, it is very possible that the world will marvel, not only at what we have built, but at the beauty that has been added to the world by the sacrifices of invisible women.”

“What they don't know is that we all belong to the places we've never even been before. If there's any kind of legitimate nostalgia, it's for everything we've never seen, the women we've never slept with, never dreamed of, the friends we haven't made, the books we haven't read, all that food steaming in the pots we've never eaten out of. That's the only kind of real nostalgia there is.”

“The Invisible mom:“As mothers, we are BUILDING great cathedrals. We cannot be seen if we’re doing it right. And one day, it is very possible that the world will MARVEL, not only at what we have built, but at the BEAUTY that has been added to the world by the SACRIFICES of invisible women.”