[Ilse] was suffering so keenly that she wanted to arraign the universe at the bar of her pain.

More than ever at that instant did she long for speech - speech that would conceal and protect where dangerous silence might betray.

Long ago, before I had ever seen a diamond, I read about them and I tried to imagine what they would be like ... When I saw a real diamond in a lady's ring one day I was so disappointed I cried. Of course, it was very lovely but it wasn't my idea of a diamond.

March came in that winter like the meekest and mildest of lambs, bringing days that were crisp and golden and tingling, each followed by a frosty pink twilight which gradually lost itself in an elfland of moonshine.

A house from which nobody ever went away without feeling better in some way. A house in which there was always laughter.

Ilse and I hunted all over the old orchard today for a four-leaved clover and couldn't find one. Then I found one in a clump of clover by the dairy steps tonight when I was straining the milk and never thinking of clovers. Cousin Jimmy says that is the way luck always comes, and it is no use to look for it.