Irene Hunt, Up a Road Slowly

"that old Mrs. Bishop was lacking in the qualities that make a good mother. And saying it that way makes her sound a good deal better than she really was."

"I was especially perceptive to all things beautiful that morning—raspberries in blue china bowls were enough to make the heart sing."

"One never stops climbing, Julie, unless he wants to stop and vegetate. There’s always something just ahead."

"I found lines that mirrored an ache and longing I had so often felt when the beauty around my woods cathedral was too intense, when the need to grasp and keep loveliness left me with a sense of desolate frustration."

"On such a night,’ I thought, ‘were ill and good,Bright and unlovely; precious, tawdry, All mingled into one And pressed against my heart."

"From my window I watched the full moon—a moon that reminded me of Brett—become shadowed, little by little until there was only a deep blackness in the woods at night. I would sit there wakeful, hour after hour, and wonder if this aching around my heart, this sense of being alone, forlorn and unwanted in a world where there was gayety and love for others of my age, was going to continue for all of my days."

"... I wondered why so much had been written about love's pain and so little about the glorious relief of being delivered from love's pain."

"It happens the world over - we love ourselves more than we do the one we say we love. We all want to be Number One, we've got to be Number One or nothing! We can't see that we could make ourselves loved and needed in the Number Two, or Three, or Four spot. No sir, we've got to be Number One, and if we can't make it, we'll rip and tear at the loved one till we've ruined every smidgin of love that was ever there."