“Sometimes, she reflected, she dressed for courage, sometimes for success, and sometimes for the consolation of knowing that whatever else went wrong, at least she liked her clothes.”

“...she had begun to learn that success was sometimes simply a matter of having the courage to proceed in the direction of one's dreams.”

“Despite all her strengths, there was a certain brittleness to her. Sometimes she retreated intoher keep. Sometimes she ran away. But she did not forgive and she did not forget.”

“She believes in love and romance. She believes her life is one day going to be transformed into something wonderful and exciting. She has hopes and fears and worries, just like anyone. Sometimes she feels frightened. Sometimes she feels unloved. Sometimes she feels she will never gain approval from those people who are most important to her. But she’s brave and good-hearted and faces her life head-on.”

“It doesn't work like that," she said, and I was hoping she would tell me how it did work.Maybe she could see that, because she went on. "Sometimes you're loved because of your weaknesses," she said. "What you can't do is sometimes more compelling than what you can.”

“Nature sometimes joins her effects and her appearances to our acts with a sort of serious and intelligent appropriateness; as if she would compel us to reflect.”