Vicki Covington, Bird of Paradise

"I’ve never known a tranquil atheist. Don’t they always look like they just sat on a tack?"

"If there’s one thing I learned in Alanon, it’s that you got to face the music because it just grows louder when you ignore it."

"I allowed myself a microscopic view into his ice-colored eyes. It was like viewing one of those photographs of the Arctic region – very foreign, exotic, clearly a place you’ve never dreamed of going."

"I was that kind of tired you feel when you’ve spent a day in a hospital while a loved one undergoes surgery and comes through all right, the loved one, of course, being myself, and Christmas being the surgical procedure."

"I’m serious, now let me know every time you see her cry. The thought brings me great joy. Hope."

"Neva ought to smile more. It breaks her anxiety into tiny pieces of joy you want to gather up and hand back to her in your palms, as if to say, “See what you can make when you loose the reins."

"Old age breeds the miracle of recall. You have no short-term memory atall; you can’t remember what you did minutes ago, but you can recall with exquisite clarity what you did on your fifth birthday and how it all felt."

"The choice was whether to be sad and foolish or sad and reasonable."

"All the men I know add that “hands that prepared it” line. They must know it’s right complimentary, an incentive to keep the women cooking."

"Wasting talent is a sin. I’m not big on sin, but I know a sin when I see one staring me in the face. I’m not big on sin, but I know a sin when I see one staring me in the face. It’s just not courteous to not use or wear something that somebody’s given you as a well-meaning gift. It goes against Southern ways, not that God is Southern by any stretch of the imagination, but I do think He expects us to be an example for the rest of the country, as far as manners go."