“What after all, is a halo? It's only one more thing to keep clean.”

“There's only one thing more important... and that is, after you've done what you set out to do, to feel that it's been worth doing.”

“The things that the novel does not say are necessarily more numerous than those it does say and only a special halo around what is written can give the illusion that you are reading also what is not written.”

“They keep coming up new all the time - things to perplex you, you know. You settle one question and there's another right after. There are so many things to be thought over and decided when you're beginning to grow up. It keeps me busy all the time thinking them over and deciding what's right. It's a serious thing to grow up, isn't it, Marilla?”

“Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition: the clean becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day.”

“Performance anxiety and a dry-cleaning bill; those were the only things keeping me from stark raving lunacy.”