“She was the bitter quarrels she had with her brother whom she loved dearly. She was Katie’s secret, despairing weeping. She was the shame of her father stumbling home drunk. She was all of these things and of something more…”

Sometimes I say I don’t believe in God and Jesus and Mary. I’m a bad Catholic because I miss mass once in a while and I grumble when, at confession,

Well’ Francie decided, ‘I guess the thing that is giving me this headache is life – and nothing else but’.

But she needs me more than she needs him and I guess being needed is almost as good as being loved. Maybe better.

What must I do, mother, what must I do to make a different world for her? How do I start?” “The secret lies in the reading and the writing. You are able to read.

All of us are what we have to be and everyone lives the kind of life its in him to live.

Suffering is also good, it makes a person rich in charachter.

I get a heavy penance for something I couldn’t help doing. But good or bad, I am a Catholic and I’ll never be anything else.

It takes a lot of doing to die.

It’s come at last,” she thought, “the time when you can no longer stand between your children and heartache. When there wasn’t enough food in the house you pretended that you weren’t hungry so they could have more.

If there was only one tree like that in the world, you would think it was beautiful. But because there are so many, you just can’t see how beautiful it really is.

Oh, magic hour, when a child first knows she can read printed words.

Francie was ten years old when she first found an outlet in writing. What she wrote was of little consequence.

Everything, decided Francie after that first lecture, was vibrant with life and there was no death in chemistry. She was puzzled as to why learned people didn’t adopt chemistry as a religion.

No. I don’t want to need anybody. I want someone to need me … I want someone to need me.

Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.

It’s come at last”, she thought, “the time when you can no longer stand between your children and heartache.