Here is the most difficult aspect of forgiveness: You have to ask in order to receive it.
This was true magic, the making and unmaking of the world with paper and ink.
The aunts tried to encourage her not to be so good. Goodness, in their opinion, was not a virtue but merely spinelessness and fear disguised as humility. The aunts believed there were more important things to worry about than dust bunnies under the beds or fallen leaves piling up on the porch.
Never agree to take a puppy for a week, Elinor knew that now. A week was all the time it took to be won over completely, despite the messes on the carpets and the shedding, the chewed slippers and shredded books.
If you’re disconnected from someone for a long enough time, does blood still commit you to one another? Does history, or fate?
When a person accepted a gift from someone, she was accepting the way the giver felt about her as well, any fool knew that.
Some stories begin at the beginning and others begin at the end, but all the best stories begin in a library.
This is what love was, you stayed when you wanted to run away. You held on when you knew you had no choice but to let go.
What you wind up regretting aren’t the things you do, it’s what you don’t do that you will never forgive yourself for.
Life all happened so quickly; people tell you it will, but you won’t believe it until it happens to you. Cry all you want, being young will slip through your hands and you will be left standing there, you who were once so young, not recognizing yourself or your life.
Words were everything, stories were more powerful than any weapon, books changed lives.
When you have a sister, someone knows the story of who you were and who you would always be.
Choose courage over caution. Take time to visit libraries. Look for light in the darkness. Have faith in yourself. Know that love is what matters.
Seeing has little to do with opening your eyes; it’s what you feel inside that counts, it’s what you know without anyone telling you.
Who can you trust if not your sister? Who knows your story better than she? If you saw one Owens sister at the grocery, the other would be right beside her. If one was working in the garden, making certain the rows of herbs were weeded, her sister would be there as well, carrying a basket to collect the dandelion greens.
Time is out there. Everything that ever happened is still happening. For instance, if I took your hand in mine.” Which he did as he was speaking. “It would be happening for hundreds of years.
She was remembering everything. How love could change a person, how it could cause you the greatest sorrow or shelter you from harm.
She was good at forgetting; she had practiced for years, and it was now a skill at which she excelled.
When you are a wolf, no place is safe, no one can be trusted. Unless they are what you are. Hunted.
Women here in Massachusetts had been drowned and beaten and hanged, especially if they were found to have access to books other than the Bible, for the Puritans had been convinced that they alone had the ear of God.