“Truth to tell, I'm right proud of Glory. She's standing up for what she believes is right. All of us should lead our children to do that, don't you know?”

“There's more to stories than it seems at first looking," she said. "Two sides to most stories. Folks better be thinking about that for once.”

“Libraries are about books. Books have no color. And they don't care who reads them.”

“She wore heavy sandals, with socks. No kid in the entire state of Mississippi wore black socks in the summer. Shoot, if I wasn't standing smack-dab in the middle of the library, I wouldn't be weari...”

“I walked straight to the library. Mrs. Bloom, the librarian, always knows everything.”

“For the rest of the afternoon, Miss Bloom smiled almost as bright as the big yellow sun shining through the front picture window. Her library was filled up with people who loved books.”

“Once a thing is set to happen, all you can do is hope it won't. Or will-depending. As long as you live, theres always something waiting, and even if its bad, and you know it's bad, what can you do?...”

“Unless you refuse the bad things happening to you, you will continue to suffer with your own consent!”

“Bad things can happen, and often do--but they only take up a few pages of your story; and anyone can survive a few pages.”

“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...”