“I have spent my life waiting for something to happen,’ she said. ‘And I have come to understand that nothing will. Or it already has, and I blinked during that moment and it's gone. I don't know which is worse — to have missed it or to know there is nothing to miss.”

“I never said I didn't want to marry. It just didn't happen-Iam not the sort of lady a man chooses to marry, for I am too plain and too serious. Now I am reconciled to being on my own.”

“I have a bed and enough to eat and kind people about me. God is still with me. For these things I am grateful and have no reason to complain”

“My father was often impatient during March, waiting for winter to end, the cold to ease, the sun to reappear. March was an unpredictable month, when it was never clear what might happen. Warm days raised hopes until ice and grey skies shut over the town again.”

“I wanted to wear the mantle and the pearls. I wanted to know the man who painted her like that.”

“Perhaps thee will best understand what Abigail is like if I tell thee that when she quilts she prefers to stitch in the ditch, hiding her poor stitches in the seams between the blocks.”

“I had walked along that street all my life, but had never been so aware that my back was to my home”