“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.”

“That's the way you have to be with boys," said Betsy. "Beam about their old football when you're dying to know whether they're going to take you to a party.”

“This going around with boys makes me sick," said Tacy."I like Herbert Humphreys," said Tib.It was just like Tib to like a boy and say so."Oh, if you have to have a boy around, it might as well be Herbert," said Betsy, who liked him too."He wears cute clothes," said Tacy, blushing.Herbert Humphreys, who had come to Deep Valley from St. Paul, wore knickerbockers. The other boys in their grade wore plain short pants.”

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

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

“Then he kissed her. Betsy didn't believe in letting boys kiss you. She thought it was silly to be letting first this boy and then that one kiss you, when it didn't mean a thing. But it was wonderful when Joe Willard kissed her. And it did mean a thing.”

“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.”