“Willadee asked him if he thought maybe it should say HAPPY EVER AFTER, but Samuel said no, he thought happiness was like any other miracle. The more you talked about it, the less people believed it was real. It was like Swan said, some things, everybody just had to find out about for themselves.”

“You expect us to believe the damnedest things.”

“Moses Never Closes was something folks counted on. It was a certain place in an uncertain world. Folks wanted it to stay the way it was, because once you change one part of a thing, all the other parts begin to shift, and pretty soon, you just don’t know what’s what anymore.”

“And she knew Life well enough to know that if one person in a house gets really miserable for any length of time, the misery spreads like smallpox.”

“And that's the way things have gone along from that day until this. Not staying the same, but always changing. And that's okay, because once one part of a thing changes, all the other pieces begin to shift, and pretty soon it's a whole new story.”

“But leaving is just something that happens in life. We all do it someday, one way or another. There's worse things than going away with the taste of love still fresh in our mouths.”

“September showed up right on schedule, and lasted a whole month.”