“What would life be like without her writing? Writing filled her life with beauty and mystery, gave it life...and promise.”

“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.”

“Well, Betsy," he said, "your mother tells me that you are going to use Uncle Keith's trunk for a desk. That's fine. You need a desk. I've often noticed how much you like to write. The way you eat up those advertising tablets from the store! I never saw anything like it. I can't understand it though. I never write anything but checks myself. ""Bob!" said Mrs. Ray. "You wrote the most wonderful letters to me before we were married. I still have them, a big bundle of them. Every time I clean house I read them over and cry.""Cry, eh?" said Mr. Ray, grinning. "In spite of what your mother says, Betsy, if you have any talent for writing, it comes from family. Her brother Keith was mighty talented, and maybe you are too. Maybe you're going to be a writer."Betsy was silent, agreeably abashed."But if you're going to be a writer," he went on, "you've got to read. Good books. Great books. The classics.”

“Was life always like that? she wondered. A game of hide and seek in which you only occasionally found the person you wanted to 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?”

“You might as well learn right now, you two, that the poorest guide you can have in life is what people will say.”

“Betsy liked to talk. Her father always said she got it from her mother, and her mother always said she got it from her father. But whomever she got it from she was certainly a talker.”