“You don't trade in the devil you know for the one you don't know.”

“I didn't know how to say goodbye. Words were stupid. They said so little. Yet they opened up holes you could fall into and never climb out of again.”

“Words said can never be recalled. So it is best, oftimes, not to speak too quickly. Yet words left unsaid are worse. We wear them like weights around our hearts.”

“The house was so quiet, as if everyone had been spirited out of sight. I had a feeling of moving through time itself. I saw myself as a small, scurrying animal rushing into my future. But I was not afraid.”

“So we gave the afternoon some sanity after all and I wonder, Uncle Andrew, is life sane, as we tried to make it? Or is it insanity, as it was yesterday on the Gerard plantation? And why don't more people try to make it sane?Or if it is full of sanity for them, why do they try to rip that sanity to pieces and impose their form of insanity? Can you help me understand?”

“I earn my own respect," I told Emilie. "I don't ride the coattails of someone else.”

“Haven't my past sermons taught you anyt”

“You don't trade in the devil you know for the one you don't know.”

“...I've learned that doing what you think is right doesn't always make you feel good. For another, I've learned that sometimes you just have to keep on going when you want to do nothing but drop. And that just doing the everyday things, like keeping a shop running or getting up every morning, will keep the work going until things can straighten out again. And doing those things right every day soon becomes more important than the more pressing issues of the time.”

“I find American girls have a spirit and honesty about them that is most refreshing.”

“When a woman's face is wrinkledAnd her hairs are sprinkled, With gray, Lackaday!Aside she's cast, No one respect will pay;Remember, Lasses, remember.And while the sun shines make hay:You must not expect in December, The flowers you gathered in May.”