“Gently guide the tender vine else it become wild, tangled and impossible.”

“Feel not obliged to make good use of every ripe fruit on the vine.”

“What wild undisturbed corners do you leave within you or within your partner, your children, your parents, your closest friends? What is left respectfully and quietly for passive cultivation, for privacy, for the imagination, for discovery, for serendipity, for faith, for secrecy, for grace, for reverence, for the untapped, for the future, for the unknowable and the unknown?”

“A simple question. A simple answer. What opportunities lie within our reach that hold the power to make a difference in the quality of the lives of others simply by sharing the bounties and blessings that grace our lives?”

“Cultivate plants which attract lovely company.”

“But her mother had looked at her curiously, gravely, puzzled by this creature who seemed all contradictions - at one moment so hard, at another so gentle, gentle to tenderness, even. Anna had been stirred, as her child had been stirred, by the breath of the meadowsweet under the hedges; for in this they were one, the mother and daughter, having each in her veins the warm Celtic blood that takes note of such things - could they only have divined it, such simple things might have formed a link between them.”

“Mrs. Charlotte Phelan's Guide to Husband-Hunting, Rule Number One: a pretty, petite girl should accentuate with makeup and good posture. A tall plain one, with a trust fund.”