“Almost Homeby Sugar Mae ColeHome isn’t always a place you picture in your mindWith furniture and cookies and music playing and people laughing.Home is something you can carry around like a dreamAnd let it grow in your heart until you’re ready for it.Losing things helps you appreciate when you find them againAnd finding things gives you hope that when you lose thingsIt might not be forever.Once, long ago, a girl lost her home, but she didn’t lose her dream.She hung on to it as the wind kept trying to blow it away,But that just made it stronger.So now she has keys and walls of many colorsAnd people around her who think she’s something.”

“I'll tell you something about tough times. They just about kill you, but if you decide to keep working at them, you'll find your way through.”

“I'll tell you something about tough things. They just about kill you, but if you decide to keep working at them, you'll find the way through. On the Food Network they have these shows where cooks have to put a meal together with all these weird ingredients. That's a lot like my life-dealing with things you wouldn't think ever go together. But a good cook can make the best meal out of the craziest combinations.”

“You cannot measure the loss of a human life. It's all the things a person was, all their dreams, all the people who loved them, all they hoped to be and could give back to the world.”

“Why do you think, A.J.," they say in unison, "that you find these boys so attractive?" I didn't say that this fiery chemical explosion leaps from somewhere inside me. Parents don't want to hear these things. I shrugged and said nothing. "Maybe you should try sitting on the intensity," Mom suggests, "just until your feelings catch up with reality.""We could chain you to the water heater," Dad offers, "until these little moments pass."You see what I'm up against.”

“I hope you'll have the kind of life where what you stand for is so important that it makes some people outright hostile. You won't know how strong your beliefs really are until you have to defend them.”

“When you listen to G. T. Stoop, you understand the importance of being a honorable person, you get charged to fight for the truth, you get angry that so many politicians are playing games with people's trust.”