“It was a wonderful life. To have a stage play right in this room, with real people acting real parts.”

“In World War One, they called it shell shock. Second time around, they called it battle fatigue. After 'Nam, it was post-traumatic stress disorder.”

“While most people took family for granted, he [Father Tim] took it for grace.”

“Why can't life always be lived under the stars,' she said, 'with great music and family and friends?”

“... for fog was merely a cloud that wasn't too smitten with itself to visit terra firma.”

“Professor Morgan had called [Dooley] 'a lad of few words.' That wasn't true. There were words spilling around in him all the time. Too many words. His problem was organizing them.”

“Some experiences are universal. A girl is a girl whether she lives in West Omaha or Sweet Valley. Books are often far more than books.”

“A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.”

“The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,And all the sweet serenity of books”

“...I do come home at Christmas. We all do, or we all should. We all come home, or ought to come home, for a short holiday - the longer, the better - from the great boarding-school, where we are for...”

“He went to the church, and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and for, and patted the children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down into the kitchens of ho...”

“The Christmas presents once opened are Not So Much Fun as they were while we were in the process of examining, lifting, shaking, thinking about, and opening them. Three hundred sixty-five days late...”