“I noticed that the houses in Fort Smith were numbered but it was no city at all compared to Little Rock. I thought then and still think that Fort Smith ought to be in Oklahoma instead of Arkansas...”

“SMITH TREASURE," she read softly. "It was the kids, right? That's what they were trying to say. In the house. Everywhere. The SMITH TREASURE was the kids.”

“Bricks could be used to fill Fort Knox. I know, I know. You’re probably thinking, if we fill Fort Knox with bricks, where will we keep all the gold that’s kept there? I still need to get precise measurements, and move all my clothes, but I think it’d be a good idea to store the gold in my closet.
”

“People do not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father's blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day. I was just fourteen years of age when a coward going by the name Tom Chaney shot my father down in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and robbed him of his life and his horse and $150 in cash money plus two California gold pieces that he carried in his trouser band.”

“My whole life had split in two: Smith and not Smith. I liked the Smith parts of it so much better.”

“…not a fort at all, but a giant amulet, a city made from the magic in our hearts and the land itself.”