“Happiness takes effort. You have to make yourself available to happiness. That is probably the best definition of faith that I can come up with.”

“I craved something so deep, so passionate that it hurt to even think about it. Looking up at that first star, just now sparkling, happy in its dance through my atmosphere, I made my wish, my prayer, my making myself available.”

“Have you ever noticed, when things seem to be working against you, that if you focus on fixing things, think about a solution, that inevitably you work it all out?”

“Kyle is my best friend. Why would I risk screwing that up?""Mackenzie Catherine Dobson, have you learned nothing from romantic comedies? Do I need to make a trip to the video store?" Tess set her fork down and sighed. "'We're just friends' is the oldest plot device in the book. All it really means is that you're just friends until one of you get the balls to do something about all the unresolved tension.”

“Happiness lies in a large measure of self-forgetfulness, either in work . . . or in the love of others. ♥”

“Having a collection, taking it out, looking at it, reordering it, and putting it away is creative in itself. It doesn't yield a product, like the results of an art, but is stops time, as making art does.”

“Is being burnt a requisite for the making of art? Personally, I don't think it is. But art is poultice for a burn. It is a privilege to have, somewhere within you, a capacity for making something speak from your own seared experience.”