“Trust your happiness and the richness of your life at this moment. It is as true and as much yours as anything else that ever happened to you.”

“A story is like something you wind out of yourself. Like a spider, it is a web you weave, and you love your story like a child.”

“...with the most infinite tenderness I have ever known in my life, he put his arms around me, gently, gently, and I embraced him around the neck, and we touched...”

“You waste life when you waste good food.”

“[From The Jilting of Granny Weatherall]You waste life when you waste good food.”

“Strolling, keeping step, his stout polished well-made boots setting themselves down firmly beside her thin-soled black suede, they put off as long as they could the end of their moment together, and kept up as well as they could their small talk that flew back and forth over little grooves worn in the thin upper suface of the brain, things you could say and hear clink reassuringly at once without disturbing the radiance which played and darted about the simple and lovely miracle of being two persons named Adam and Miranda, twenty-four years old each, alive and on earth at the same moment: 'Are you in the mood for dancing, Miranda?' and 'I'm always in the mood for dancing, Adam!' but there were things in the way, the day that ended with dancing was a long way to go.”

“...without disturbing the radiance which played and darted about the simple and lovely miracle of being two persons named Adam and Miranda, twenty four years old each, alive and on earth at the same moment: 'Are you in the mood for dancing?' and 'I'm always in the mood for dancing, Adam!' but there were things in the way, the day that ended with dancing was a long way to go.”