Hattie Big Sky

Hon, when someone's a true friend, there's no need to miss 'em." She patted her chest. "'Cause they're always right here.

I will have to rely on that painful teacher, experience.

Sir if I was your daughter I would wait until this train started again and throw myself in front of it!

Hattie.' Grace patted my arm. 'My cows sing better than you do.

no matter how big his smile or how loud his laugh, you could hear the hurt underneath.

My mama always said piecing quilts is like making friends.' She kept her eyes on the scissors as she cut up a piece of blue ticking. 'Sometimes the more different fabrics - and people - are,' she said, 'the stronger the pattern.' I looked up at her. She smiled a sad, sweet smile at me. I felt as if she'd looked right into my heart and seen all my warts and flaws, and held her own heart out to me anyway.

It seems unfair not to give credit where credit is due simply because one lacks a certain number of candles on one's birthday cake.

Sometimes, lying out on Aunt Ivy and Uncle Holt's back lawn, it'd felt as if I could stretch out my arms and my fingertips and rake them across the underside of the heavens and end up with a fistful of stars.

Life may throw curveballs at us, but it's up to us to swing and hit them out of the park.

It's the company, not the cooking, that makes the meal.

The war was in Europe, not here. Why all this fuss about where someone was born? Wasn't it where he lived - rather, how he lived - that counted?

Home is not a building, but a feeling of belonging.

I thought about all the fences that get built in this world - the ones that divide folks and tear them up, like the actions of the Kaiser and his henchmen, and the ones that bring folks closer together, like this stretch of fence Karl Mueller had build for me.

History has a way of repeating itself, but it's up to us to break the cycle.

Sometimes the biggest battles we face are within ourselves.

The power of words can either build bridges or burn them down, so choose them wisely.

There's a beauty in the wide open spaces that allows room for dreams to grow.

A true friend is someone who stands by your side, even when the world turns its back on you.

I came here thinking I was going to win this war and come on home in no time at all. Now I think I'll never leave this mud and cold and misery. I know you expect your old pal to be full of humor, but my best buddy died this morning. I was not twenty yards from him. In all the training, they never told us about the smell of death. For the first time, I was not so confident of coming home. Not so confident of anything. I always bragged about killing some Germans. Killing is nothing to brag about. Nothing at all.

It seems unfair to give credit where credit is due simply because one lacks a certain number of candles on one's birthday cake.

It's funny how a place can seep into your bones and become a part of you.

Sometimes it takes a big dream to wake up a small town.

Perilee’s Wartime Spice Cake 1 cup brown sugar, firmly packed 1 1/2 cups water 1/3 cup shortening or lard 2/3 cup raisins 1/2 teaspoon each ground cloves and nutmeg 2 teaspoons cinnamon 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 teaspoon salt 2 cups flour 1 teaspoon baking powder Boil brown sugar, water, shortening, raisins, and spices together for 3 minutes. Cool. Dissolve baking soda in 2 teaspoons water and add with salt to raisin mixture. Stir together flour and baking powder and add to raisin mixture one cup at a time, beating well after each addition. Pour into a greased and floured 8-inch square pan and bake at 325 °F for about 50 minutes. (Adapted from Butterless, Eggless, Milkless Cake, in Recipes and Stories of Early Day Settlers; and from Depression Cake, described in Whistleberries, Stirabout and Depression Cake: Food Customs and Concoctions of the Frontier West.) Hattie’s Lighter-than-Lead Biscuits 3/4 cup cooked oatmeal, cooled 1 1/2 cups wheat or rye flour 4 teaspoons baking powder 3/4 teaspoon salt 2 tablespoons lard, shortening, or butter 1/4 cup milk Mix oatmeal with sifted flour, baking powder, and salt. Cut in lard, shortening, or butter. Add milk and mix, forming a soft dough. Do not overmix. Roll out on lightly floured surface to 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Cut with floured biscuit cutter (or drinking glass) and bake on an ungreased cookie sheet at 425 °F for 12 to 15 minutes. (These are what Hattie served to Rooster Jim in Chapter 17.)

Rather, the lessons this life has planted in my heart pertain more to caring than to crops, more to Golden Rule than to gold, more to the proper choice than to the popular choice.

My bounce-around life had taught me that dreams where dangerous things - they look solid in your mind, but you just try to reach for them. It's like gathering clouds.