“One strain could call up the quivering expectancy of Christmas Eve, childhood, joy and sadness, the lonely wonder of a star”
“Our lives can hold just so much. If they're filled with one thing, they can't be filled with another. We ought to do a lot of thinking about what we want to fill them with.”
“We'll just have to find more flowers in the spring. That's when they bloom, tra la.”
“All those resolutions she had made on Babcock's bay! How they had been smashed to smithereens! She wondered whether life consisted of making resolutions and breaking them, of climbing up and slipping down.
'I believe that's it', she thought. 'And the bright side of it is that you never slip down to quite the point you started climbing from. You always gain a little....'
She thought about those lists she had made in her programs for self-improvement. She hadn't followed them out by any means, but they had revealed her ideals....
'We're growing up,' Betsy said aloud. She wasn't even sure she liked it. But it happened, and then it was irrevocable. There was nothing you could do about it except try to see that you grew up into the kind of human being you wanted to be.
'I'd like to be a fine one,' Betsy thought quickly and urgently.”
“We're growing up and I don't like it," said Tacy, as they say at Heinz's later, drinking coffee.”
“Our lives can only hold so much. If they’re filled with one thing, they can’t be filled with another. We ought to do a lot of thinking about what we want to fill them with.”
“New things are easier to do than old familiar things when there's going to be a change," Betsy decided profoundly.”
“The power of unfulfilled desires is the root of all man’s slavery.”
“I can't get over this. Dad isn't Sam's dad? Dad is a friend? How was I supposed to know that? People shouldn't be allowed to sign themselves as Dad unless they are your dad. It should be the law.”
“death never comes at the right time, despite what mortals believe. Death always comes like a thief.”
“Hopeless causes are the only ones worth fighting for. The fight for the taxpayer is the most hopeless of them all.”
“The sun kept on with its slipping away, and I thought how many small good things in the world might be resting on the shoulders of something terrible.”
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