"Adolescence is like having only enough light to see the step directly in front of you."

"No one should ever compromise the dignity of another human being."

"Everyone knows that road, the one leading out of town into a deep green expanse of pastures and old farmhouses, which at first makes it seem like you're entering a fairy tale, something sweet and old fashioned and lost in time. But, like all fairy tales, the beginning is always beautiful, a ruse to draw you into something you aren't anticipating."

"At the end of the evening, Paxton and Willa walked Agatha out to the nurse's car, after Agatha had given them a blind tour of the Madam, pointing out by feel and memory everything she remembered about the house. She and Georgie sliding down the banister and their skirts flying up. Playing dolls in Georgie's room. Having pineapple upside - down cake the Jacksons' cook would make in a cast - iron frying pan, so that the brown sugar on top turned crispy. A slide - away secret compartment in the bookcase where they used to leave notes for each other."

"Most locals knew who Della Lee was. She waitressed at a greasy spoon called Eat and Run, which was tucked far enough outside the town limits that the ski - crowd tourists didn't see it. She haunted bars at night. She was probably in her late thirties, maybe ten years older than Josey, and she was rough and flashy and did whatever she wanted - no reasonable explanation required. 'Della Lee Baker, what are you doing in my closet? 'You shouldn't leave your window unlocked. Who knows who could get in? Della Lee said, single - handedly debunking the long - held belief that if you dotted your."

"But that would leave Paxton to fend for herself, and the last thing any woman wanted in this kind of situation was to look around and see all the people who could help her doing nothing."

"Once he'd asked, 'Don't you want to read? There are hundreds of books in the sitting room.'She had laughed and said, 'I've read them all. I want to remember them the way they were. If I read them now, the endings will have changed."

"A hummingbird cake, she decided as she turned on the kitchen light. It was made with bananas and pineapples and pecans and had a cream cheese frosting.She would make it light enough to float away.She reached over to open the window. To float to her daughter."

"Eby wanted to say so much to her. She wanted to say that waking up is the most important part of grieving, that so many women in their family failed to do it, and she was proud of Kate for fighting her way back. But Eby didn't say anything. She could fix a lot of things, but family wasn't one of them. It was one of the hardest things she'd ever had to come to terms with."

"The air around her was cool lately, as if she were creating a vacuum with her unhappiness."

"Just as she was about to turn, she caught a whiff of something sweet. She inhaled deeply, instinctively wanting to savor it, but then she nearly choked when it landed on her tongue with a bitter taste. It was so strong she actually made a face.That, her grandmother had described to her once after making a particularly bad lemon cream pie, was exactly what regret tasted like."

"Life is about experience... You can't hold on to everything"

"Like magic, she felt him getting nearer, felt it like a pull in the pit of her stomach. It felt like hunger but deeper, heavier. Like the best kind of expectation. Ice cream expectation. Chocolate expectation."

"Why were girls in such a hurry to grow up? Agatha would never understand. Childhood was magical. Leaving it behind was a magnificent loss."

"He claimed the waters must have, indeed, been healing, because look how hard his journey was on him to get there, and how easy it was on him to get home."

"She went to the window. A fine sheen of sugary frost covered everything in sight, and white smoke rose from chimneys in the valley below the resort town. The window opened to a rush of sharp early November air that would have the town in a flurry of activity, anticipating the tourists the colder weather always brought to the high mountains of North Carolina. She stuck her head out and took a deep breath. If she could eat the cold air, she would. She thought cold snaps were like cookies, like gingersnaps. In her mind they were made with white chocolate chunks and had a cool, brittle vanilla frosting. They melted like snow in her mouth, turning creamy and warm."

"Snow flurries began to fall and they swirled around people's legs like house cats. It was magical, this snow globe world."

"Under her thick pancake makeup, her skin had been pockmarked, but he would stare at her adoringly from his cot at night and imagine her scars were constellations, a secret map to a far - off, happy place."

"On the day the tree bloomed in the fall, when its white apple blossoms fell and covered the ground like snow, it was tradition for the Waverleys to gather in the garden like survivors of some great catastrophe, hugging one another, laughing as they touched faces and arms, making sure they were all okay, grateful to have gotten through it."

"He didn't think he belonged here, so she was making him face some uncomfortable facts. People adapt. People change. You can grow where you're planted."

"He stood there, glowing like the sun, and stared at her like she was the unbelievable one."

"It was hard not to feel sorry for a life that had no purpose of its own... His only purpose, it seemed, was to come into her mother's life in order to send her home. For that, Bay decided, she would be grateful.For the rest, though, she wondered if she would ever be able to forgive him. She hoped she wouldn't remember him long enough to find out."

"I needed to stop being what everyone thought I was."

"But relying on one person for your every need is so dangerous. One set of hands isn't enough to keep you from falling"

"She looked like autumn, when leaves turned and fruit ripened."

"My favorite books are the ones that make me smile for hours after reading them. I want that for my readers, for the sweetness to linger. Sort of like chocolate, but without the calories."

"Sitting at the old patio table she'd cleared of leaves, she smiled and leaned back. The stars looked twisted in the limbs of the trees, like Christmas lights. She felt like part of the hollow around her was filling. She'd come here with too many expectations."

"Motherhood, true motherhood, was what went on when no one else could see."

"But she stopped herself. That wouldn't make it right. You didn't forgive because it was the only choice you thought you had. That didn't make it forgiveness, that made it desperation. She'd always been too desperate about Jake. Always."

"To Fred, those years seemed to pass like quickly skimming a book and then finding the ending wasn't what he expected. He wished he'd paid more attention to the story."

"She knew him in that way you can only know a person as a child. Like if you cracked away the adult shell, you'd find that child, happily sitting inside, smiling at you."

"Agatha had declared that her friendship to Georgie still existed, as if it was a living, breathing thing, something that came to life the moment it happened and didn't just go away because they no longer acknowledged it."

"You'd be surprised how easy some things can be, things you never thought you'd do, when you take self - respect out of the equation."

"Mary had become anxious in her old age, and she hated being away from the house for long. She'd hold the girls' hands tightly and calm herself by telling them what she would make for first frost that year - pork tenderloins with nasturtiums, dill potatoes, pumpkin bread, chicory coffee. And the cupcakes, of course, with all different frostings, because what was first frost without frosting? Claire had loved it all, but Sydney had only listened when their grandmother talked of frosting. Caramel, rosewater - pistachio, chocolate almond."

"Sometimes it's difficult to tell what side of the moral compass we are all on. There are so many things to factor in."

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

"But she couldn't start this, because then it would end. Stories like this always ended. She couldn't take this pleasure, because she would spend the rest of her life missing it, hurting from it."

"The word lethologica describes the state of not being able to remember the word you want."

"Jack thought anyone who read couldn't be all that bad."

"Who I am, what I am, is the culmination of a lifetime of reading, a lifetime of stories. And there are still so many more books to read. I'm a work in progress."