“I put my hand on the altar rail. 'What if ... what if Heaven is real, but only in moments? Like a glass of water on a hot day when you're dying of thirst, or when someone's nice to you for no reaso...”

“We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love.”

“The last of the cherry blossom. On the tree, itturns ever more perfect. And when its perfect, it falls. And then of course once it hits theground it gets all mushed up. So its only absolutely perfe...”

“Disco's are tricky. You look a total wally if you dance too early but after one crucial song tips the disco over, you look a sad saddo if you don't.”

“I've never listened to music lying down. Listening's reading if you close your eyes.Music's a wood you walk through.”

“Strip back the beliefs pasted on by governesses, schools, and states, you find indelible truths at one's core.”

“How can I tell anyone that there has always lived within me a rusty sense of disgust-a dull, brackish water that I suspect is my soul?”

“I'll tell you a secret.Old storytellers never die.They disappear into their own story.”

“A secret note is secret. There is no reason to sign it.”

“With a secret like that, at some point the secret itself becomes irrelevant. The fact that you kept it does not.”

“Then Cassie told her story. The feeling was like gathering up everything she's ever done or felt or known up to that moment and tying it into a ball and pitching it with all her might as far away a...”

“Every woman needs secrets,' her mother said with a smile then, her eyes meeting Sally's in the rearview mirror. 'Remember that when you're old like me, pumpkin, because the world has a way of makin...”