“Sandy is kind. But she has a smart mind”

“But with the increase of serious and just ground of complaint, a new kind of patience had sprung up in her Mother's mind. She was gentle and quiet in intense bodily suffering, almost in proportion as she had been restless and depressed when there had been no real cause for grief.”

“For one thing, she hadn't exactly chosen a field; although she has since childhood imagined picking up her Oscar, the category has never been determined. There was some thought that by the time she grew up they would give out Oscars for Best Novel (and that by then she would have written one), or that maybe she would just get some kind of honorary Oscar for her distinctive life observations made in everyday conversations, or the occasional letter. ”

“I got tears in my eyes, but they were not the crying kind, they were just the kind that show you your body agrees so much with what your mind just said.”

“Once you start making decisions in which your heart, mind, and soul are congruent, you'll feel it as a kind of lift, if not liftoff.”

“Whenever Sadie sees engagement rings, she feels a strange mix of emotions: a kind of excitement mixedwith a vague sadness. A longing for a speci??c kind of inclusion she both aspires to and fears. And, oddly, she feels a sense of failure, ofshame. She knows it’s nonsensical, but there it is, big inside her, this sense of having screwed everything up, of having lost something shenever had.”

“She could only wait. But she was not idle while she waited, because she was holding herself in readiness for whatever it was that she would have to do. She was trying not to be frightened in her mind, and she found that that sort of waiting and thinking really keep a person quite busy.”