“It was too bad, but sometimes a little knowledge could ruin your whole day, or at least take off some of the shine.”

“I put on my thickest red flannel nightie and dove into bed. Mercifully, SanJuanna had taken the chill off the sheets with a warming pan. I intended to lie there for a while and take stock of my life. That's what you do at the end of the century, don't you? I think I actually fell asleep right away and only dreamed I was taking stock.”

“That night, when SanJuanna had cleared the main course and brought dessert in, my mother called for quiet and said, "Boys, I have an announcement to make. Your sister made the apple pies tonight. I'm sure we will all enjoy them very much.""Can I learn how, ma'am?" said Jim Bowie."No, J.B. Boys don't bake pies," Mother said."Why not?" he said."They have wives who make pies for them.""But I don't have a wife.""Darling, I'm sure you will have a very nice one someday when you're older, and she'll make you many pies. Calpurnia, would you care to serve?"Was there any way I could have a wife, too? I wondered as I cut through the browned C and promptly shattered the entire crust.”

“It is better to travel with hope in one's heart than to arrive in safety. . . . We should celebrate today's failure because it is a clear sign that our voyage of discovery is not yet over. The day the experiment succeeds is the day the experiment ends. And I inevitably find that the sadness of ending outweighs the celebration of success.”

“I don't have that many days left," he said as we sat together in the library. "Why would I want to spend them on matters of drainage and overdue accounts? I must husband my hours and spend every one of them wisely. I regret that I didn't come to this realization until I reached fifty years of age. Calpurnia, you would do well to adopt such an attitude at an earlier age. Spend each of your allotted hours with care.”

“One day I would have all the books in the world, shelves and shelves of them. I would live my life in a tower of books. I would read all day long and eat peaches. And if any young knights in armor dared to come calling on their white chargers and plead with me to let down my hair, I would pelt them with peach pits until they went home.”

“But my mother's life was a never-ending round of maintenance. Not one single thing did she ever achieve but that it had to be done all over again, one day or one week or one season later. Oh, the monotony.”