I’ve been the oldest child since before you were born

Before you can be anything, you have to be yourself. That’s the hardest thing to find.

Happiness is excitement that has found a settling down place, but there is always a little corner that keeps flapping around.

The way I see it, the difference between farmers and suburbanites is the difference in the way we feel about dirt. To them, the earth is something to be respected and preserved, but dirt gets...

Nathan, how can you stand playing the same piece over and over again?” And Grandpa Nate answered, “Why don’t you ask me how I can stand making love to the same woman over and over...

Secrets are the kind of adventure she needs. Secrets are safe, and they do much to make you different. On the inside where it counts.

Friendship is a combination of art and craft. The craft part is in knowing how to give and how to take. The art part is in knowing when, and the whole process only works when...

Because after a time having a secret and nobody knowing you have a secret is no fun. And although you don’t want others to know what the secret is, you want them to at least...

…I didn’t run away to come home the same. -Claudia

What happened was: they became a team, a family of two. There had been times before they ran away when they acted like a team, but those were very different from feeling like a team....

He also learned to regard each port of call as part of the journey and not as destination. Every voyage begins when you do.

Jamie: The only kind of deal that I can make is with money, and we haven’t got any of that.Mrs. Frankweiler: You are very poor indeed if that is the only kind of deal you...

It is sometimes necessary to use unnecessary words like thank you and please just to make life prettier.

I think you should learn, of course, and some days you must learn a great deal. But you should also have days when you allow what is already in you to swell up inside of...

But lying in bed just before going to sleep is the worst time for organized thinking; it is the best time for free thinking. Ideas drift like clouds in an undecided breeze, taking first this...

Some days you must learn a great deal. But you should also have days when you allow what is already in you to swell up and touch everything. If you never let that happen, then...

I waited for her to catch up, and when I did, she slowed down, and I missed seeing the light in her hair. I never told Nadia how much I liked seeing the halo the...