Good things come, but they're never perfect; are they? You have to twist them into something perfect..

The silence in the room had width, height, depth, mass and substance..

Betsy. The great war is on but I hope ours is over. Please come home. Joe..

It was June, and the world smelled of roses. The sunshine was like powdered gold over the grassy hillside..

We'll just have to find more flowers in the spring. That's when they bloom, tra la..

Was life always like that? she wondered. A game of hide and seek in which you only occasionally found the person you wanted to be?.

The most important part of religion isn't in any church. It's down in your own heart. Religion is in your thoughts, and in the way you act from day t….

When there are boys you have to worry about how you look, and whether they like you, and why they like another girl better, and whether they're going….

In silence the three of them looked at the sunset and thought about God..

She tried to act as though it were nothing to go to the library alone. But her happiness betrayed her. Her smile could not be restrained, and it spre….

You might as well learn right now, you two, that the poorest guide you can have in life is what people will say..

Isn't it mysterious to begin a new journal like this? I can run my fingers through the fresh clean pages but I cannot guess what the writing on them ….

Come in early, so there'll be time to pop corn,' Mrs. Ray said. If she mentioned popping corn, they always came in early. So she usually mentioned it..

People were always saying to Margaret, 'Well, Julia sings and Betsy writes. Now what is little Margaret going to do?' Margaret would smile politely, ….

One strain could call up the quivering expectancy of Christmas Eve, childhood, joy and sadness, the lonely wonder of a star.

The wastes of snow on the hill were ghostly in the moonlight. The stars were piercingly bright..

Do you girls have hope chests?' Lloyd asked. We certainly do.' I don't,' said Betsy. 'My husband and I are going to use paper plates and napkins.' Po….

I cannot remember back to a year in which I did not consider myself to be a writer, and the younger I was the bigger that capital 'W..

You have two numbers in your age when you are ten. It's the beginning of growing up..

She thought of the library, so shining white and new; the rows and rows of unread books; the bliss of unhurried sojourns there and of going out to a ….

And yet, even as she spoke, she knew that she did not wish to come back. not to stay, not to live. She loved the little yellow cottage more than she ….