“Anyone who thinks small towns are friendlier than big cities lives in a big city.”

“Blue lightning flashed in the kitchen, and for a split second you could see every calendar on the wall in there. Than an almighty explosion like the crack of doom. She'd rolled a cherry bomb across the floor, and it went off right under the eight feet of the Cowgill brothers, the three big bruisers and Ernie.”

“That meant I could come back whenever I could manage it. And she was telling me to go. She knew the decision was too big a load for me to carry by myself. She knew me through and through. She had eyes in the back of her heart.”

“I read because one of these days I'm going to get out of this town, and I'm going to go everywhere and meet everybody, and I want to be ready”

“The years went by, and Mary Alice and I grew up, Slower than we wanted to, faster than we realized.”

“[A young adult novel] ends not with happily ever after, but at a new beginning, with the sense of a lot of life yet to be lived.”

“Never trust an ugly woman. She's got a grudge against the world,' said Grandma who was no oil painting herself.”