Ann Rinaldi quotes:

I didn't know how to say goodbye. Words were stupid. They said so little. Yet they opened up holes you could fall into and never climb out of again.

When I write I am the real me.

The house was so quiet, as if everyone had been spirited out of sight. I had a feeling of moving through time itself. I saw myself as a small, scurrying animal rushing into my future. But I was not afraid.

Because I had already resolved that if you're afraid of love, your heart will break anyway, only in not half so nice a fashion as it does when you let somebody love you.

A person has to be strong in life. A person must practice strength, even if they don't feel it.

Let me say the good are often punished unfairly.

I earn my own respect," I told Emilie. "I don't ride the coattails of someone else.

You don't trade in the devil you know for the one you don't know.

Most of our miseries we bring on ourselves. And they're the sum of our own stupidity.

The most important thing we ever have to learn in life is to live with our choices.

Sometimes it take courage to leave.

Sometimes it takes courage to leave.

A person doesn't ask permission to fall in love; not even of themselves.

When a woman's face is wrinkled And her hairs are sprinkled, With gray, Lackaday! Aside she's cast, No one respect will pay; Remember, Lasses, remember. And while the sun shines make hay: You must not expect in December, The flowers you gathered in May.

I know now why God gave us babies. They require constant attention, of course. They make messes and disturb the peace, but their cuteness and smiles are something the only reminder of God we have in the house.

Love is like light and there are two kinds, the bursting fireworks of the moment and the solid, fixed stars that sometimes become obscured in the heavens, but are always there, year after year, for a lifetime.

And in that moment I possessed and lost the whole world and everything in it and was left with the feeling and the knowledge, which is love, that no matter how we give ourselves we always end up losing. That to love is to lose, the moment we agree to the bargain. And that, being human, we keep standing there wanting to lose more....

I will stand by you. You must not be afraid. This is a brave land, Susanna, founded by brave people who never shrank from their duty or their vision of freedom. But this land has a future only if each of us stands up for what is right when it is given us to do so.

When I wrote, I felt better, as if I had remade the world all of a piece, the way I wanted it to be, not the way it was.

I want a place. It has to do with the kind of person I want to be. And how I fit in to everything. I want people to listen when I open my mouth. And know I'm worth listening to." She stared at me. "That's all?" To me it was not all, it was everything.

No one is a virgin, because life has screwed us all.

Are all American girls as daft as you, Rachel?" "I hope so," I said.

Doing good doesn't always make you feel good. I don't care what they tell you in church.

There are depths to the human soul that should not be fathomed.