Elizabeth George Speare quotes:

After the keen still days of September, the October sun filled the world with mellow warmth...The maple tree in front of the doorstep burned like a gigantic red torch. The oaks along the roadway glowed yellow and bronze. The fields stretched like a carpet of jewels, emerald and topaz and garnet. Everywhere she walked the color shouted and sang around her...In October any wonderful unexpected thing might be possible.

All the way up the river she's been holding back somehow, waiting. Now you'll both have to wait. I'm not going to disappoint her, Kit. When I take you on board the Witch, it's going to be for keeps.

I have no word of yours to assure me that our brief friendship held for you the same significance it held for me, but I must go on believing so. Every hope of the future is meaningless unless I have faith that you and I will share it together.

Tis a strange thing, that the only friends I have I found in the same way, lying flat in the meadows, crying as if their hearts would break.

What a pity every child couldn't learn to read under a willow tree...

From that first moment, in a way she could never explain, the Meadows claimed her and made her their own.

There is no escape if love is not there," Hannah had said. Had Hannah known when she herself had not even suspected? It was not escape that she had dreamed about, it was love.

Have you noticed her name?"Kit leaned sideways to see the letters painted jauntily on the transom. "The WITCH! How did you dare? Does Hannah know?" "Oh, she's not named after Hannah. I hadn't gone ten miles down the river that day before I knew I'd left the real witch behind.

the demons that make a person afraid are the hardest to cast out.

There is no escape if love is not there

She snatched at the dream that had comforted her for so long. It was faded and thin, like a letter too often read.

Who would guess," he teased, "that I'd ever see you on a rooftop with straw in your hair?" Kit giggled. "Are you saying I've turned into a crow?" "Not exactly." His eyes were intensely blue with merriment. "I can still see the green feathers if I look hard enough. But they've done their best to make you into a sparrow, haven't they?

The impression of strength came from an extraordinary vitality that seemed to pulse in the very air around him

There was something irresistible about popcorn.

How right- how incredibly, utterly right- and how impossible!