“There’s no debt. There never has been. We are friends.”

“I have a hundred reasons to dislike this gentleman,” Erica reminded herself aloud. “And a thousand reasons more not to go courting with any man.”Lavinia laughed at that. “Whenever has a woman’s heart listened to her head?”

“Halfway back up the hillside, Cecilia reached behind her, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world for Brian to lean forward to take her hand.”

“We know the road to freedom has always been stalked by death.”

“Nearly every morning, a certain woman in our community comes running out of her house with her face white and her overcoat flapping wildly. She cries out, "Emergency, emergency," and one of us runs to her and holds her until her fears are calmed. We know she is making it up; nothing is has really happened to her. But we understand, because there is hardly one of us who has no been moved at some time to do just what she has done, and every time, it has taken all our strength, and even the strength of our friends and families, too, to keep us quiet.”

“If you've never been hated by your child, you've never been a parent.”

“If you have never been hated by your child, you have never been a parent.”