“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 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.”

“Jane Austen easily used half a page describing someone else's eyes; she would not appreciate summarizing her reading tastes in ten titles.”

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

“You're so calm and quiet, you never say. But there are things inside you. I see them sometimes, hiding in your eyes.”

“They were a mother's words, words I would say to my own daughter if I were concerned for her”

“So many (too many) books are published every year, and it seems everyone is writing a book. Perhaps we should all be reading more and writing less!”