“I'm finished with something, but I'm not beginning anything. That's wrong. When you finish something, you ought always to begin something new.”

“You have two numbers in your age when you are ten. It's the beginning of growing up.”

“When there are boys you have to worry about how you look, and whether they like you, and why they like another girl better, and whether they're going to ask you to something or other. It's a strain.”

“Good things come, but they're never perfect; are they? You have to twist them into something perfect.”

“It looks like something out of Whittier's "Snowbound,"' Julia said. Julia could always think of things like that to say.”

“Isn't it mysterious to begin a new journal like this? I can run my fingers through the fresh clean pages but I cannot guess what the writing on them will be.”

“People were always saying to Margaret, 'Well, Julia sings and Betsy writes. Now what is little Margaret going to do?' Margaret would smile politely, for she was very polite, but privately she stormed to Betsy with flashing eyes, 'I'm not going to do anything. I want to just live. Can't people just live?”