“It happens the world over - we love ourselves more than we do the one we say we love. We all want to be Number One, we've got to be Number One or nothing! We can't see that we could make ourselves loved and needed in the Number Two, or Three, or Four spot. No sir, we've got to be Number One, and if we can't make it, we'll rip and tear at the loved one till we've ruined every smidgin of love that was ever there.”

“We had good long talks about my writing in the days that followed. "Write of things you know, Julie; familiar, simple things that you have experienced; things that have touched you deeply.""But nothing's ever happened to me. I've just lived here with Aunt Cordelia and you most of my life, I've gone to school, visited Father--oh, sure, I'm in love with Danny, but that's something we've grown into--very wonderful for us, but not very exciting for the rest of the world. How can a person who has lived as quiet a life as I have find anything to write about?""Then you do have a problem. If you haven't lived long enough to have felt anything deeply, than you are in the same position I--as many would-be writers are. You've nothing to say. So take up crocheting.”

“We've got two lives -- one we're given and the other one we make.”

“We all start out so damn sure, thinking we've got the world on a string. If we ever stopped to think about the infinite number of ways we could be undone, we'd never leave our bedrooms.”

“That was the way it was that beautiful evening of cold November rain and muddy country roads and crazy windshield wipers. That was the moment of my greatest security and confidence; it was the time when I realized that love makes one a better person, a kinder gentler one.”

“We really are little book whores,aren't we?Not just in the number of books that we read,but the number of guys we are in love with.”

“Each one of us continues to carry the heart of each self we've ever been, at every stage along the way, and a chaos of everything good and rotten. And we have to carry this weight all alone, through each day that we live. We try to be as nice as we can to the people we love, but we alone support the weight of ourselves.”