“Live an active life among people who are doing worthwhile things, keep eyes and ears and mind and heart open to absorb truth, and then tell of the things you know, as if you know them. The world will listen, for the world loves nothing so much as real life.”

“You don’t have to know a lot of things for your life to make a lasting difference in the world. But you do have to know the few great things that matter, perhaps just one, and then be willing to live for them and die for them. The people that make a durable difference in the world are not the people who have mastered many things, but who have been mastered by one great thing.”

“Not prejudging things, listening to what's going on, keeping your ears, heart, and mind open.”

“But what I do believe is that if you're a girl who was born in Homsea, a girl who lives in a nothing kind of house with an ordinary kind of family, then you can't know everything about the world and that it's probably good to keep an open mind about things, just in case.”

“Sonny, don't you tell me what's worthwhile--true love is the best thing in the world, except for cough drops. Everybody knows that.”

“The real struggle is about you: you, a person who has to learn to live in the real world, to inhabit her own skin, to know her own heart, to stop waiting for life to begin.”