“Gossip, unless aimed or honed sharp like a weapon, was natural to human beings. It showed interestin oe's fellows, interest in the well being of the tribe. "Gossip was a way to learn taboos, pass on warnings, share the burden fo being human among many so the onus of bearing it alone would fall on no one person. " Molly said. From an Anna Pigeon Novel”

“As she drove the Trace, each curve revealing a scene rich with life and as picturesque as illustrations from a children's book, Anna was struck again by the beauty of the state. Over her years as a Yankee and a Westerner, she'd heard Mississippi described many ways. Beautiful had never been one of them.”

“Dead strangers evoked a smorgasbord of the lesser emotions and served as marvelous educational tools, warnings, and veiled threats. When an acquaintance was killed, it was closer to home; one knew some of the threads that tied the deceased to a common humanity. Without enough real connection to grieve, one was left in an uncomfortable place between curiosity and embarrassment.”

“Anna remembered her fifth grade teacher, Mr. White, telling her that hatred wasn't the worst of emotions. If one hated, one still cared. Indifference was the most inhuman.”

“When she finally found her way onto the Trace, the sun was rising and, with it, her spirits.The Natchez Trace Parkway, a two lane road slated, when finished to run from Nashville, Tennessee, to Natchez, Mississippi, had been the brainchild of the Ladies' Garden Clubs in the South. Besides preserving a unique part of the nations past,...the Trace would not be based on spectacular scenery but would conserve the natural and agricultural history of Mississippi.”

“Hers was an evil-sounding chuckle that Anna loved. The sort of chortle Dorothy might have heard shortly before all hell broke loose in the land of Oz”

“perhaps love was like the mumps. If a woman came down with it after forty, it could kill her”