“Hope, how she had grown to hate the word. It was an insideious seed planted inside a person's soul, surviving covertly on little tending, then flowering so spectacularly that none could help but cherish it.”

“It was an isidious seed planted inside a person's soul, surviving covertly on little tending, then flowering so spectacularly that none could help but cherish it. It was hope, too, that prevented a person taking counsel from experience.”

“It was unsettling, Laurel thought, suppressing a shiver, how quickly a person's presence could be erased, how easily civilization gave way to wilderness.”

“The certainty that she would find what it was she sought just slipped away, until one night she knew there was nothing, no one waiting for her. That no matter how far she walked, how carefully she searched, how much she wanted to find the person she was looking for, she was alone" - The Forgotten Garden”

“She either confused me with a much older child or else she glimpsed deep inside my soul and perceived a hole that needed filling. I've always chosen to believe the latter. After all, it's the librarian's sworn purpose to bring books together with their one true reader.”

“My heart flutters a little. Or something inside my heart flutters; an artery worn so thin that a flap has come loose, is waving about, in the current of my blood.”

“His words had tossed the book that was her life into the air and the pages had been blown into disarray, could never be put back together to tell the same story.”