“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 spread from her tightly pressed mouth, to her round cheeks, almost to the hair ribbons tied in perky bows over her ears.”

“We're growing up and I don't like it," said Tacy, as they say at Heinz's later, drinking coffee.”

“Betsy dreamed about going away from Deep Valley, but she didn't for a moment suspect that around a bend in her Winding Hall of Fate a journey was actually waiting.”

“Our lives can hold just so much. If they're filled with one thing, they can't be filled with another. We ought to do a lot of thinking about what we want to fill them with.”

“But perhaps people who liked to write aways made lists! Just for the fun of it.”

“We're growing up," Betsy said aloud. She wasn't even sure she liked it. But it happened, and then it wasn't irrevocable. There was nothing you could do about it except try and see that you grew up into the kind of human being you wanted to be. "I'd like to be a fine one," Betsy thought quickly and urgently.”

“After all, you couldn't go through life rolling your friendships into one gigantic snowball. You wanted different kinds of friendships, with different kinds of people.”

“You don't grow up, she reasoned now, until you begin to evaluate yourself, to recognize your good traits and acknowledge that you have a few faults.”

“The older I get the more mixed up life seems. When you're little, it's all so plain. It's all laid out like a game ready to play. You think you know exactly how it's going to go. But things happen...”

“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 loved any place on earth. but she was through with it except in her memories. ”

“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 to day, in the way you treat other people. It's honesty, and unselfishness, and kindness. Especially kindness.”