“But some stories sprout bright vines that tendril off beyond our sight, carrying the folk we love best with them, and if I knew how to accept that with graces, I would share the secret.”

“Oh, September! It is so soon for you to lose your friends to good work and strange loves and high ambitions. The sadness of that is too grown-up for you. Like whiskey and voting, it is a dangerous and heady business, as heavy as years. If I could keep your little tribe together forever, I would. I do so want to be generous. But some stories sprout bright vines that tendril off beyond our sight, carrying the folk we love best with them, and if I knew how to accept that with grace, I would share the secret.”

“I assigned him to help me trim the Brussels sprouts, but instead he kept trying to throw them away when he thought I wasn’t looking. “Brussels sprouts, Grace, really? These are our friends. Why are you doing this to them?”

“Can words sprout wings? Can they glide like butterflies through the air? Can they captivate us, carry us off into another world? Can they open the last secret chambers of our souls?”

“If I knew how a lot of my relationships would have turned out, I never would have gotten involved in them... And I would have missed out on some of the best times in my life.”

“In our not-yet-acknowledged secret garden lie the seeds of some of our best not-yet-written stories”