“Connor: [about Sidda and Connor's wedding] Vivi, it's taken years to nail down a date. She's always said, "What's the rush, when things are so good?" I don't know what the hell she's so afraid of - it's like she's always waiting for the bottom to drop out. Vivi: You know why she thinks that, don't ya, honey? Because it did. It always did.”

“As Vivi drove, it seemed that not only the Ya-Ya's bodies but the earth and sky were sweating. The very air they breathed was almost a juice. Moonlight spilled down into the convertible, onto the four friends' shoulders and knees and on the tops of their heads, so that their hair seemed to have little sparks shooting off it. Vivi had no idea at all where she was headed, but she knew that whatever direction she went, her friends would go with her.”

“Mama parted with these Divine Secrets because I asked her to, Sidda thought. the reason I feel like crying, Sidda realized, is not just because this scrapbook is vulnerable, but because Mama, whether she knows it or not, has made herself so vulnerable to me.”

“See, she goes places when she reads. I know all about that. When I'm reading, wherever I am, I'm always somewhere else.”

“She leaned down and smelled the skin at Connor's shoulders right at the spots where, as Martha Graham might have said, his own wings might have been attached.”

“She walks barefoot into the humid night, moonlight on her freckled shoulders. Near a huge, live oak tree on the edge of her father's cotton fields, Sidda looks up into the sky. In the crook of the crescent moon sits the Holy Lady, with strong muscles and a merciful heart. She kicks her splendid legs like the moon is her swing and the sky, her front porch. She waves down at Sidda like she has just spotted an old buddy.Sidda stands in the moonlight and lets the Blessed Mother love every hair on her six-year-old head. Tenderness flows down from the moon and up from the earth. For one fleeting, luminous moment, Sidda Walker knows there has never been a time when she has not been loved.”

“Sidda sank down into the wide flannel embrace of their bodies, and she rested. For a moment she died a little death, they died it together.”