“I've always been a very good judge of people. That's why I like so very few of them.”

“Meghan and I talked about music - she loved Ella Fitzgerald. "What about all the hip acts that college kids love? Do you like any of them?""Like who?""I don't know all their names. Snoop Diggity Do and all those hip cats." Meghan shook her head and laughed. We talked about movies - she loved anything made before 1964. No wonder I thought she was older; she was an old soul in a young body."So what's your favorite movie?" I asked."To Kill a Mockingbird." My mother would have liked Meghan. She made my father and me watch To Kill a Mockingbird with her when I was in first grade. It must have been the twentieth time she'd seen it, but she still cried at the parts that made her weepy-eyed the first nineteen times.”

“If we're open to it, God can use even the smallest thing to change our lives... to change us. It might be a laughing child, car brakes that need fixing, a sale on pot roast, a cloudless sky, a trip to the woods to cut down a Christmas tree, a school teacher, a Dunhill Billiard pipe...or even a pair of shoes. Some people will never believe. They may feel that such things are too trivial, too simple, or too insignificant to forever change a life. But I believe. And I always will.”

“I don't know what sort of occasion I was waiting for...because everyday was a special occasion with your father.”

“I know the well of my maternal incompetence is deep but I am determined to siphon up a calm and breathing hope for him.”

“Am I crazy Loretta?""A little," she says. I glance up at her. "Sometimes we're called on to do crazy things.”

“Donna VanLiere's "A Christmas Blessing"“Don’t ever take your EYES off the FINISH line. If you take your eyes off the GOAL, you’ll never make it to the END.”