That’s good luck,” Aunt Jet says when their electricity goes as well. “We’ll be the light in the darkness.
It’s figuring out the why of things; the final factor that makes a person act can be so damn elusive, but you can always find some motivation, if you look hard enough. The wrong word said at the wrong time, a gun in the wrong hand, the wrong woman who kisses you just right. Money, love, or fury – those are the causes for most everything.
You’re so rebellious as it is.” “I am not!” Franny said with her customary defiance.
After listening in, Franny had decided that magic was not so very far from science. Both endeavors searched for meaning where there was none, light in the darkness, answers to questions too difficult for mortals to comprehend. Aunt Isabelle knew her niece was there on the stairs taking notes, but said nothing. She had a special fondness for Franny. They were alike in more ways than Franny would care to know.
It helped to write things down. It ordered your thoughts and if you were lucky revealed feelings you didn’t know you had.
If there was anything Vincent might have done to stop it he wouldn’t have done so, for this occurred only once in a person’s life, and then only if he was lucky. It happened the way things happen in a dream. A door opens, a person calls your name, your heart beats faster, and everything is familiar, yet you don’t know where you are. You are falling, you’re in a house you don’t recognize and yet you want to be here, you have actually wanted to be here all of your life.
I think if I believe in anything, I believe in ghosts.
He took the narrow stairs two at a time all the way to the first floor. He then went out through the kitchen, letting the screen door slam behind him. They could hear his boots clattering on the porch steps. The girls went to the window to watch him stride down Magnolia Street. “Headed for trouble,” April said cheerfully. “How do you know that?” Jet wondered. April grinned. There was definitely a family resemblance. “Because I’m headed for the very same place.
On evenings when the orange moon was rising in the sky, and some woman was crying in their kitchen, Sally and Gillian would lock pinkies and vow never to be ruled by their passions.
He wondered if what people said was true, that no one could hate you more than members of your own family.
Many of them began to wonder why they themselves often feigned opinions rather than speak their minds, no matter how clever they were, for fear they’d be thought of as difficult.
She begged for time to stop, for clocks to break, for every star to remain fixed. But none of that happened.
They were beautiful shells, as white as the surf in the sea. When you held one up to your ear you could hear the sound of your best friend talking to you, even if she was a thousand miles away.
But she did choose courage. Didn’t she?” “In life we don’t always get what we choose. I gave her what she needed.
Things without all remedy should be without regard.
But false cheer is draining, and if you pretend long enough there’s always the possibility that you’ll become an automaton.
Honesty was like a stone, dropped and irretrievable once it was spoken aloud.
Tell me you won’t walk away again and I’ll call the whole thing off.
To hell with them,” Fanny remarked. Had her sister learned nothing at the Starling School? Other people’s judgments were meaningless unless you allowed them to mean something.
Families are the Nurseries of all Societies: and the First combinations of mankind.