"There was a strange but universal understanding among women. On some level all women knew, they all understood, the fear of being outnumbered, of being helpless. It throbbed in their chests when they thought about the times they left stores and were followed. The knocks on their car windows as they were sitting alone at red lights, and strangers asking for rides. Having too much to drink and losing their ability to be forceful enough to just say no. Smiling at strange men coming on to them, not wanting to hurt their feelings, not wanting to make a scene. All women remembered these things, even if they had never happened to them personally. It was a part of their collective unconscious."

"When you have to do something, you have to do it. Putting it off only makes it worse. Believe me, I know."

"Happiness is a risk. If you're not a little scared, then you're not doing it right."

"Every life needs a little space. It leaves room for good things to enter it."

"You can't change where you come from, but you can change where you go from here. Just like a book. If you don't like the ending, you can make up a new one."

"He fell in love with a skinny stray cat that would skulk around the dining hall during meals. Every day, Jake would offer it sausage or egg from breakfast and pepperoni or hamburger from lunch. Every day, it ran away from him. But Jake didn't give up. Even when he had the stomach flu, he snuck out of the infirmary to try to feed it. He was not going to let it down. He would watch it from classroom windows. He even made up a poem about it that he sent home to his mother in a letter. Three months later, the little cat was finally hungry enough to trust him. It never occurred to Jake that the cat."

"Some of Bay's fondest memories were of lying under the apple tree in the summer while Claire gardened and the apple tree tossed apples at her like a dog trying to coax its owner into playing catch."

"It looked like the world was covered in a cobbler crust of brown sugar and cinnamon."

"It was like the way you wanted sunshine on Saturdays, or pancakes for breakfast. They just made you feel good."

"Don't be vain. What you look like doesn't matter. It's the deed that matters."

"Summer was a lady who didn't give up her spotlight easily."

"Eby knew all too well that there was a fine line when it came to grief. If you ignore it, it goes away, but then it always comes back when you least expect it. If you let it stay, if you make a place for it in your life, it gets too comfortable and it never leaves. It was best to treat grief like a guest. You acknowledge it, you cater to it, then you send it on its way."

"Yellow joy was radiating from her. When you're happy for yourself, it fills you. When you're happy for someone else, it pours over. It was almost too bright to watch."

"Stability was overrated. Crises and adventures, on the other hand, could actually teach you something."

"The books I read when I was twenty completely changed when I read them when I was sixty."

"Those stories were the sound track of my summer with you."

"It was a remarkable realization to Eby, that we are what we're taught. That was why the Morris women were what they were. It was because they knew no different."

"He stared up at the moon, which looked like a giant hole in the sky, letting light through to the other side."

"There was an art to the male posterior. That's all there was to it."

"When Josey woke up and saw the feathery frost on her windowpane, she smiled. Finally, it was cold enough to wear long coats and tights. It was cold enough for scarves and shirts worn in layers, like camouflage. It was cold enough for her lucky red cardigan, which she swore had a power of its own. She loved this time of year. Summer was tedious with the light dresses she pretended to be comfortable in while secretly sure she looked like a loaf of white bread wearing a belt. The cold was such a relief."

"Warm, enticing scents were floating down, basil and oregano and tomato. It made Wes long for something, something he couldn't place. A happy childhood, a home."

"If a man has so much heat he burns your skin when he touches you, he's the devil. Run away"

"He hadn't meant to get so angry at Morgan. He didn't often get angry at other people. There was no sense in it. The person you were angry at was rarely ever repentant. Now, getting angry with yourself had some merit. It showed you had sense enough to chastise the one person who had any hope of benefiting from it. And he was plenty angry with himself. For many things."

"Sometimes you weren't supposed to share pain. Sometimes it was best just to deal with it alone."

"We decided to become a society of women, a club to make sure women were protected. The club was something important back then. Not like it is today."

"There was a sense of tightness in the room now, filling the space. Attraction was like that. It filled. It poured into you like batter into a pan, sticking to the sides."

"Those silly girls had no idea what they were really celebrating. They had no idea what it took to bring Agatha and her friends together seventy - five years ago. The Women's Society Club had been about supporting one another, about banding together to protect one another because no one else would. But it had turned into an ugly beast, a means by which rich ladies would congratulate themselves by giving money to the poor. And Agatha had let it happen. All her life, it seemed, she was making up for things she let happen."

"Did I ever tell you about the day I finally let go of him? That day that led me to you?"

"Josey? She heard her mother's voice in the hall, then the thud of her cane as she came closer. 'Please don't tell her I'm here, the woman in the closet said, with a strange sort of desperation. Despite the cold outside, she was wearing a cropped white shirt and tight dark blue jeans that sat low, revealing a tattoo of a broken heart on her hip. Her hair was bleached white - blond with about an inch of silver - sprinkled dark roots showing. Her mascara had run and there were black streaks on her cheeks. She looked drip - dried, like she'd been walking in the rain, though there hadn't."

"People always say life is too short for regrets. But the truth is, it's too long."

"Fate never promises to tell you everything up front. You aren't always shown the path in life you're supposed to take. But if there was one thing she'd learned in the past few weeks, it was that sometimes, when you're really lucky, you meet someone with a map."

"I was just telling Claire about a guy I met in bread class. I hate him, but he could be my soul mate."

"Bay remembered the Waverley house full of pumpkin pie scents in the fall. There had been mountains of maple cakes with violets hidden inside, lakes of butternut soups with chrysanthemum petals floating on top."

"Motherhood is hard enough without judgement from others who don't know the whole story."

"People like us will never really understand, Evanelle said. We fell in love with the men we were supposed to be with right off the bat. But women with broken hearts, they change."

"It had always fascinated him that she'd consumed so many words, that her head was full of stories, told a thousand different ways."

"Coffee, she'd discovered, was tied to all sorts of memories, different for each person. Sunday mornings, friendly get - togethers, a favorite grandfather long since gone, the AA meeting that saved their life. Coffee meant something to people. Most found their lives were miserable without it. Coffee was a lot like love that way. And because Rachel believed in love, she believed in coffee, too."

"Her hair was longer than it used to be, and it veiled her shoulders like a shawl. She used it for protection. If there was one thing Sydney knew, it was hair. She loved beauty school and loved working in the salon in Boise. Hair said more about people than they knew, and Sydney understood the language naturally."

"Fate never promises to tell you everything up front. You aren't always shown the path in life you're supposed to take. But sometimes when you're really lucky, you meet someone with a map."

"But Claire had long ago realized, even after those constant dreams of her mother leaving faded away, that when you are abandoned as a child, you are never able to forget that people are capable of leaving, even if they never do."

"Josey shook her head, thinking, if Della Lee were a candy, she would be a SweeTart. Not the hard kind that broke your teeth, the chewy kind, the kind you had to work on and mull over, your eyes watering and your lips turning up into a smile you didn't want to give."

"The outside world might have finally turned into autumn, but inside the Waverley house it still smelled of summer. It was lemon verbena day, so the house was filled with a sweet - tart that conjured images of picnic blankets and white clouds like true - love hearts."

"I know he's a good baby... but the challenge is to raise him into a good boy, then a good man."

"She did know that it's remarkably easy to fall in love with someone who is already in love with you. It's a little like falling in love with yourself."

"It felt as though they were the only people in the world, two young women about to bury the symbol of their helplessness, as if that's all it would take to make them whole again."

"Love always hurts. That's one thing I know you know. But it's worth it. That's what you don't know. Yet."

"There's not a lot I can fix for her anymore. Band - Aid and bedtime story days are almost over. This, I can fix with a simple Welcome."

"Whenever I would get too nosy as a child, my grandmother would say, 'When you learn someone else's secret, your own secrets aren't safe. Dig up one, release them all."

"We're connected, as women. It's like a spiderweb. If one part of that web vibrates, if there's trouble, we all know it, but most of the time we're just too scared, or selfish, or insecure to help. But if we don't help each other, who will?"

"Did you get rid of that sweater like I asked?'Yes, Mother, ' Josey said.'I wasn't trying to be mean the other day. It just doesn't look good on you.'Yes, Mother, ' Josey said.The truth was, that sweater, that color, looked good on her daughter. And every time she wore it, it hinted at something that scared Margaret.Josey was growing into her beauty.Margaret watched Josey leave.She used to be a beautiful woman, the most beautiful woman around.She brought out the photo again.But that was forever ago."