“Wish it, believe it, and it will be so.”

“Children lose their innocence piece by piece. The layers are carved away until our hearts have been exposed and polished into an unnatural gloss. We spend the rest of our lives trying to remember why we ever loved so passionately and how we dreamed so simply, before life chiseled us down to the core.”

“There are people nobody notices, but the world revolves around them. They're the quiet ones, the strong, peaceful ones, who form the unbreakable hub for a bunch of fragile spokes. True families aren't bred, they're spun together. And at their center, at the center of the infinite wheel of every family of every kind, blood or otherwise, there is a hub, that person, those people, who hold the wheel together and keep it turning.”

“What do you call love, then?"Someone I can't live without.”

“A chorus of tough southern belles whispered, You need a loyal husband around here. Loyal to you, loyal to your family, loyal to your land.I added, Good in bed, smart, and romantic. Politically, socially, and religiously compatible. And he had to want children.”

“Life doesn't take itself seriously for long. Joy leaves an imprint even in the hardest sorrow.”

“At the center, on the lawn of the courthouse, sat a log manger with a life-size nativity scene cut out of plywood. If an civil libertarian had complained about the nativity being on public property, he would have been hunted down like Santa's reindeer during bow season.”