“There were moments when it honestly seemed as if the world were conspiring against her.”

“There were moments bristling with deadness, when she looked out at her life and went, "" Or worse, feeling interrupted and tired, "Wha—?”

“… I remember the first moment I looked at you walking toward me and realized that somehow the rest of the world seemed to vanish when I was with you. That you were the center of everything I did and felt and thought.”

“In those vernal seasons of the year, when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness against Nature not to go out, and see her riches, and partake in her rejoicing with heaven and earth.”

“The most signal triumphs of the Romantic portrayal of memory are not those which recall past happiness, but remembrances of those moments when future happiness still seemed possible, when hopes were not yet frustrated.”

“She understood too much. She understood that she had reached her destiny point, that time and the circumstances of her life had conspired to bring her to this place. For one ecstatic moment she was the axis on which the stars revolved.”

“I'm trying to see, when everything in this world conspires to prevent us from seeing.”

“Though there were moments of beauty, Mariam knew for the most part that life had been unkind to her.”

“A mother is a mother from the moment her baby is first placed in her arms until eternity. It didn't matter if her child were three, thirteen, or thirty.”

“The name she gave was Caroline
Daughter of a miner
Her ways were free
It seemed to me
That sunshine walked beside her”